employed in the labor or the organized
recreations of man, the tendency of the association with the superior
being was in a high measure educative. They were constantly submitted
to a more or less critical but always effective selection which
tended ever to develop a higher grade of intelligence. With the
advance in the organization of society the dog is losing something of
his utility, even in the way of sport. He is fast becoming a mere
idle favorite, prized for unimportant peculiarities of form. The
effort in the main is not now to make creatures which can help in the
employments of man, but to breed for show alone, demanding no more
intelligence than is necessary to make the animal a well-behaved
denizen of a house. The result is the institution of a wonderful
variety in the size, shape, and special peculiarities of different
breeds with what appears to be a concomitant loss in their
intelligence. We often hear it remarked by those who are familiar
with dogs that the ordinary mongrels are more intelligent and more
susceptible of high training than the carefully inbred varieties,
which are more highly prized because they conform to some thoroughly
artificial standard of form or coloring. This is what we should
expect from all we know concerning the breeding. Where for
generations the dog-fancier has selected for reproduction with
reference to the trifling and often injurious features of shape he
seeks to attain, he naturally and almost necessarily neglects to
choose the creatures in regard to their mental peculiarities. The
result is that the breed tends to fall back in these regards to below
the level of the ordinary cur, who makes his place in the affections
of his owner because he has attractive or useful qualities of mind.
It appears to me, in a word, that our treatment of this noble animal,
where he is bred for ornament, is in effect degrading.

Although the formation of our fancy breeds does not serve to advance the
development of those intellectual features which are the most
interesting part of our dogs, the experiments have served to show the
amazing physical plasticity of this species under the conditions of long
domestication. The range in size between a tiny spaniel, such as those
which are bred in Chihuahua, in northern Mexico, and the great Danes or
mastiffs of northern Europe, is, perhaps, the greatest which has ever
been attained in any mammal. In some cases the larger individuals
belonging to the m