most unusual and improbable acts that we can find in the general history of life.  When was this recognition of man by beast, this extraordinary passage from darkness to light, effected?  Did we seek out the poodle, the collie, or the mastiff from among the wolves and the jackals, or did he come spontaneously to us?  We cannot tell.  So far as our human annals stretch, he is at our side, as at present; but what are human annals in comparison with the times of which we have no witness?  The fact remains that he is there in our houses, as ancient, as rightly placed, as perfectly adapted to our habits as though he had appeared on this earth, such as he now is, at the same time as ourselves.  We have not to gain his confidence or his friendship:  he is born our friend; while his eyes are still closed, already he believes in us:  even before his birth, he has given himself to man.  But the word “friend” does not exactly depict his affectionate worship.  He loves us and reveres us as though we had drawn him out of nothing.  He is, before all, our creature full of gratitude and more devoted than the apple of our eye.  He is our intimate and impassioned slave, whom nothing discourages, whom nothing repels, whose ardent trust and love nothing can impair.  He has solved, in an admirable and touching manner, the terrifying problem which human wisdom would have to solve if a divine race came to occupy our globe.  He has loyally, religiously, irrevocably recognized man’s superiority and has surrendered himself to him body and soul, without after-thought, without any intention to go back, reserving of his independence, his instinct and his character only the small part indispensable to the continuation of the life prescribed by nature.  With an unquestioning certainty, an unconstraint and a simplicity that surprise us a little, deeming us better and more powerful than all that exists, he betrays, for our benefit, the whole of the animal kingdom to which he belongs and, without scruple, denies his race, his kin, his mother and his young.

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But he loves us not only in his consciousness and his intelligence:  the very instinct of his race, the entire unconsciousness of his species, it appears, think only of us, dream only of being useful to us.  To serve us better, to adapt himself better to our different needs, he has adopted every shape and been able infinitely to vary the faculties, the aptitudes which he places at our disposal.  Is he to aid us in the pursuit of game in the plains?  His legs lengthen inordinately, his muzzle tapers, his lungs widen, he becomes swifter than the deer.  Does our prey hide under wood?  The docile genius of the species, forestalling our desires, presents us with the basset, a sort of almost footless serpent, which steals into the closest thickets.  Do we ask that he should drive our flocks?  The same compliant genius grants him the requisite size, intelligence, energy and vigilance.  Do we intend him to watch