Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 July 1885 — Ancient Dogs. [ARTICLE]

Ancient Dogs.

In the Danish “kitchen-middens,” or heaps of household refuse, piled up by the men of the newer-stone -jieriod zr a time when onr Scandinavian forefathers used chipped and polished flints instead of metals for their weapons—are found bone-cuttings belonging to Borne species of tha genus eanis. Along with these remains are seme of the long bones of birds, all the other bones of the said birds being absent. Now it is known that the bird bones here found are the very ones which dogs cannot devour, while the absent ones are such as they can bolt with ease, and it has been ingeniously argued from this that the remains in question did reall v belong to a domestic dog, as, if the animals to which they appertained hail been wolves, they would have made short work of the long bones as well as of the others. Oth. r dog bones are found in Denmark in later periods. At the time when the flint krives were succeeded by b.ronze a large dog existed, and at the time when iron was used one larger still. In Switzerland, during the newer stone period, a dog existed which is probably the oldest of which we have any record. It “partook of the character of hounds and setters, or spaniels," and, in the matter of its skull, “was about equally remote from the wolf and jackal.” This dog, too, like its Danish contempotary, was succeeded in the bronze period by a larger variety. Thus we see at a tine when onr ancestors were living “ill dens and caves of the earth," in a state of civilization about equal to that of the African or Australian aborigines of the present day, the dog was already systematically kept and “selected,” that is. any good varieties which appeared were taken note of and kept up.— Casseifs} Xhfaral History.