large, like greyhounds, of a uniform pale blue-ash, with small
ears, and large light-brown eyes. Even the wild Dingo, though so
anciently naturalised in Australia, “varies considerably in
colour,” as I am informed by Mr. P.P. King: a half-bred Dingo
reared in England[39] showed signs of wishing to burrow.
From the several foregoing facts we see that reversion in the feral
state gives no indication of the colour or size of the aboriginal
parent-species. One fact, however, with respect to the colouring of
domestic dogs, I at one time hoped might have thrown some light on
their origin; and it is worth giving, as showing how colouring
follows laws, even in so anciently and thoroughly domesticated an
animal as the dog. Black dogs with tan-coloured feet, whatever
breed they may belong to, almost invariably have a tan-coloured
spot on the upper and inner corners of each eye, and their lips are
generally thus coloured. I have seen only two exceptions to this
rule, namely, in a spaniel and terrier. Dogs of a light-brown
colour often have a lighter, yellowish-brown spot over the eyes;
sometimes the spot is white, and in a mongrel terrier the spot was
black. Mr. Waring kindly examined for me a stud of fifteen
greyhounds in Suffolk: eleven of them were black, or black and
white, or brindled, and these had no eye-spots; but three were red
and one slaty-blue, and these four had dark-coloured spots over
their eyes. Although the spots thus sometimes differ in colour,
they strongly tend to be tan-coloured; this is proved by my having
seen four spaniels, a setter, two Yorkshire shepherd dogs, a large
mongrel, and some fox-hounds, coloured black and white, with not a
trace of tan-colour, excepting the spots over the eyes, and
sometimes a little on the feet. These latter cases, and many
others, show plainly that the colour of the feet and the eye-spots
are in some way correlated. I have noticed, in various breeds,
every gradation, from the whole face being tan-coloured, to a
complete ring round the eyes, to a minute spot over the inner and
upper corners. The spots occur in various sub-breeds of terriers
and spaniels; in setters; in hounds of various kinds, including the
turnspit-like German badger-hound; in shepherd dogs; in a mongrel,
of which neither parent had the spots; in one pure bulldog, though
the spots were in this case almost white; and in greyhounds,—but
true black-and-tan greyhounds are excessively rare; nevertheless I
have been assured by Mr. Warwick, that one ran at the Caledonian
Champion meeting of April 1860, and was “marked precisely like a
black-and-tan terrier.” This dog, or another exactly the same
colour, ran at the Scottish National Club on the 21st of March,
1865; and I hear from Mr. C. M. Browne, that “there was no reason
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