ure chapter) no strong repugnance or inability to
breed under confinement; and the incapacity to breed under confinement is
one of the commonest bars to domestication. Lastly, savages set the highest
value, as we shall see in the chapter on Selection, on dogs: even
half-tamed animals are highly useful to them: the Indians of North America
cross their half-wild dogs with wolves, and thus render them even wilder
than before, but bolder: the savages of Guiana catch and partially tame and
use the whelps of two wild species of _Canis_, as do the savages of
Australia those of the wild Dingo. Mr. Philip King informs me that he once
trained a wild Dingo puppy to drive cattle, and found it very useful. From
these several considerations we see that there is no difficulty in
believing that man might have domesticated various canine species in
different countries. It would indeed have been a strange fact if one
species alone had been domesticated throughout the world.

We will now enter into details. The accurate and sagacious Richardson says,
"The resemblance between the Northern American wolves (_Canis lupus, var.
occidentalis_) and the domestic dogs of the Indians is so great that the
size and strength of the wolf seems to be the only difference. I have more
than once mistaken a band of wolves for the dogs of a party of Indians; and
the howl of the animals of both species is prolonged so exactly in the same
key that even the practised ear of the Indian fails at times to
discriminate them." He adds that the more northern Esquimaux dogs are not
only extremely like the grey wolves of the Arctic circle in form and
colour, but also nearly equal them in size. Dr. Kane has often seen in his
teams of sledge-dogs the oblique eye (a character on which some naturalists
lay great stress), the drooping tail, and scared look of the wolf. In
disposition the Esquimaux dogs differ little from wolves, and, according to
Dr. Hayes, they are capable of no attachment to man, and are so savage,
that {22} when hungry they will attack even their masters. According to
Kane they readily become feral. Their affinity is so close with wolves that
they frequently cross with them, and the Indians take the whelps of wolves
"to improve the breed of their dogs." The half-bred wolves sometimes
(Lamare-Picquot) cannot be tamed, "though this case is rare;" but they do
not become thoroughly well broken in till the second or third generation.
These facts show that there