THE CHIEF BREEDS OF DOGS
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Let us not dwell further on the dog’s origin—a very obscure question, concerning which all that one can say is nothing but supposition, although more or less plausible. Let us turn to the study of the animal as found in a state of domestication.
“It would be hard to discover two dogs exactly alike. Were they of the same breed, the same shape and size, they would differ in coat, at least in some details. Three colors, red, white, and black, belong to the dog’s coat; sometimes one alone for the whole body, sometimes all mixed, sometimes the three distributed in spots or in great splashes. If the coloring is varied, the spots are hardly ever arranged in order, but scattered by chance. There is want of symmetry in their distribution; or, in other words, on the two halves of the body, the right and left, the spots do not correspond. You might say the same of most domestic animals: you would nearly always note differences between two oxen, two horses, two goats, two cats; and would find that in the same animal both sides of the body are not exactly alike in the arrangement of the colors.