Have you ever been to a dog show? I mean a big one like the Westminster Kennel Club show in New York, with 3,000 dogs on the benches and over a hundred different breeds represented? If you have, perhaps you have been impressed, as I have been, with the marvelous variety of forms to be seen.

A remarkable "flight" picture of one of the liaison couriers trained and used by the French for emergencies when the telephone system in the front-line trenches was put out of commission by enemy artillery (see pages 17, 55, and 73).

Let its recall for a moment some of the dogs we have noticed and see how widely they differ in appearance. For instance. compare a giant Saint Bernard, weighing between 250 and 300 pounds, with a tiny Chihuahua, which may barely tip the scales at a pound and a half and which can stand on the outstretched hand of a lady. Or look at the tall, lithe wolfhounds and greyhounds, built to move like the winds of heaven, and then turn toward the short-legged, crooked-jointed bassets and dachshund, and you will surely smile and probably laugh out loud.

Compare a Newfoundland or. better still, an Eskimo dug. whose thick, dense coat can withstand even the rigors of an Arctic winter, with a hairless dog of Mexico or Africa, which looks cold even in the middle of summer.

And we note that such striking comparisons can lie made not only in the general appearance of the dogs, but in almost every feature of them. We see ears that stand straight up like those of the German shepherd, ears that fall forward at the tip, like those of the collie, and ears long and pendulous, like those of the bloodhound, which extend far beyond the tip of the nose and sometimes touch the ground when the animal is on the trail.

These and the endless other comparisons of the many different breeds may make us hesitate to accept the conclusion which naturalists, led by Darwin, have arrived at, namely, that all domestic dogs are descended from a few wild forms, namely, wolves, jackals, and possibly dingos (page 10). Yet it seems that the naturalists are correct in their conclusions, and that the many varieties found at the bench show are but so many proofs of what Maeterlinck, and Cuvier before him, point out, namely, that the dog is the one animal which can follow man all over the earth and adapt himself to every climate and to every use to which his master chooses to put him.