It is a more important consideration that several canine species evince (as
will be shown in a future 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