We have now to consider an animal which has more interest for us than any member of the animal kingdom, with the single exception of _Homo sapiens_; indeed, many people, if asked to name the creature which feels for them the most disinterested friendship, the most devoted love, and which shows the most constant and untiring kindness and attention, would without hesitation name the humble Carnivore rather than the arrogant and self-asserting Primate. It was not his servants who recognised Ulysses on his return from his long voyage; it was not even his faithful Penelope; it was the old Dog Argus, who “---- ---- soon as he perceived Long-lost Ulysses nigh, down fell his ears Clapp’d close, and with his tail glad sign he gave Of gratulation, impotent to rise And to approach his master as of old.” Where shall we find an instance of human devotion, unaltered and unalterable by death, greater than that recorded by our great Lake poet of the Dog whose ill-fated master was killed in passing Helvellyn?-- “The Dog, which still was hovering nigh, Repeating the same timid cry, This Dog had been through three months’ space, A dweller in that savage place. Yes, proof was plain, that since the day On which the traveller thus had died, The Dog had watched about the spot, Or by his master’s side. How nourished here through such long time, He knows who gave that love sublime, And gave that strength of feeling, great Above all human estimate.” No animal has been so universally or so thoroughly domesticated as the Dog; in none have the moral and intellectual faculties been so largely developed; and there is certainly none which the human race could so ill spare. We might possibly, with a proper amount of practice, become vegetarians, and so do without our sheep and cattle, our pigs and poultry. The Cat we might easily dispense with, for she is, after all, a very passive sort of creature, and rarely condescends to express either emotion or affection, whatever her feelings may be; but to lose the Dog would be to lose a friend, and a friend so faithful and true that his loss would be a veritable plucking out of the right eye and a cutting off of the right hand. As Mr. Darwin observes: “It is scarcely possible to doubt that the love of man has become instinctive in the dog,” which it can hardly be said to have done, as yet, in man! Wherever man of any degree of civilisation is found, there the Dog is to be found too--everywhere invaluable, though often grossly and brutally ill-treated. In all probability, too, Dogs occur as true natives in all parts of the world, except in the Australian region--Australia, New Zealand, and the surrounding islands; in these places he has, in all probability, been introduced by man.