Among the canidæ one is able to select a type with whose habits of life we are more familiar than any other, Canis Familiaris, as he is affectionately called, the companion of man his master, and faithful guardian--often unto death. Professor Scott Elliott gives reason to think that the dog was the first animal tamed by man, and that he was descended from some wild jackal-like form, probably crossed by the wolf. The dog is then aptly called by Huxley, the brother of the wolf, who has been changed by the intelligence of man into the guardian of the flock. It seems that in his rudimentary stage of domestication he was an unofficial scavenger among the habitations of neolithic man, as the pariah is in the East to-day, and that little acts of kindness towards his offspring on the part of those early men and women were the first dawnings of a friendship of thousands of years. It is a long story from the slinking jackal to the bloodhound, mastiff, St. Bernard, staghound, collie and terrier of to-day, and one which reflects much credit on both parties to this friendship, just as do those other long friendships between servant and master, of which we still see a few examples. Living with us as he does the dog and his habits of life are an open book: he is then all the better for my humble purpose here. I would refer again to the curious use of the gender which we unconsciously apply to the dog. It is no longer “she,” but “he.” When a dog is looking a little unfriendly how we always try to wheedle him with “Poor old fellow,” and so on, as a matter of course, assuming his masculine character. James Payn pointed out once a little point which proves how good a comrade we have in the dog, when he reminds us of the cautious approach we usually make to a cat, and the “hail-fellow-well-met” tone we adopt towards the dog, rolling him over and using kindly opprobrious terms, such as friends among schoolboys hurl at one another when they are on the best of terms. A fox-terrier is, perhaps, the most human of all the numerous types evolved through the skill of man, and it is a smooth-coated specimen of this variety which I will examine now as to what his hairy coat can tell us of his habits. Some of the Dog’s Habits. His attitudes which bear on this question are all of the passive order. His locomotion is so fitful and different from that of the horse that we shall find on his coat no animal pedometers. [Illustration: Fig. 38.--Gluteal region of dog, showing whorls over the tuberosities of the ischia.]