a second dog like
the first, along with word that these dogs did not fight so weak
animals, but rather the lion and the elephant, and that he had only
two of such individuals, and in case that Alexander had this one
killed, too, he would no longer find his equal. Alexander matched this
dog with a lion and then with an elephant, and he killed them both.
Alexander was so afflicted at the premature death of the first dog,
that he built a city and temples in honor of the animal.

Did the mountainous province of Epirus called Molossia, in ancient
Greece, give its name to the _molossi_ that it produced, or did these
large dogs give their name to the country? At all events, we know that
it was from Epirus that the Romans obtained the molossi which fought
wild animals in the circuses, and that from Rome they were introduced
into the British islands and have became the present mastiffs.

Although our hunting and shepherd's dogs have a European and the
mastiffs an Asiatic ancestry, the ancestry of the harriers is African,
and especially Egyptian; in fact, in Upper Egypt we find a sort of
large white jackal (_Simenia simensis_) with the form of a harrier,
and which Paul Gervais regarded with some reason as the progenitor of
the domestic harrier, and a comparison of their skulls lends support
to this opinion.

A study of the most ancient monuments of the Pharaohs shows that the
ancient Egyptians already had at least five breeds of dogs: two very
slim watch dogs, much resembling the harrier, a genuine harrier, a
species of brach hound and a sort of terrier with short and straight
legs. All these dogs had erect ears, except the brach, in which these
organs were pendent, and this proves that the animal had already
undergone the effects of domestication to a greater degree than the
others. The harrier of the time of the Pharaohs still exists in great
numbers in Kordofan, according to Brehm.

Upon the whole, we here have, then, at least three stocks of very
distinct dogs: 1, a hunting or shepherd's dog, of European origin; 2,
a mastiff, typical of the large breed of dogs indigenous to Asia; and
3, a harrier, indigenous to Africa.

We shall not follow the effects of the combination of these three
types through the ages, and the formation of the different breeds; for
that we shall refer our readers to a complete work upon which we have
been laboring for some years, and two parts of which have already
appeared.[1]

[Footnote 1: Le