[ Darwin / The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication ]
Darwin (1809 - 1882) is of course the foremost proponent of evolution and natural selection, and wrote extensively on a number of scientific topics.
This work was first published in 1868; the text below (with most footnote references removed) is taken from the 2nd edition (New York: Appleton, 1884).
The first mention of Newfoundlands comes in a discussion of how dogs differ in their adaptation to disease and climate:
Different breeds of dogs are subject in different degrees to various diseases. They certainly become adapted to different climates under which they have long existed. It is notorious that most of our best European breeds deteriorate in India. The Rev R. Everest believes that no one has succeeded in keeping the Newfoundland dog long alive in India; so it is, according to Lichtenstein, even at the Cape of Good Hope. (37)
The next reference is to the variation in dogs' feet:
It has already been remarked that dogs differ in the degree to which their feet are webbed. In dogs of the Newfoundland breed, which are eminently aquatic in their habits, the skin, according to Isidore Geoffroy,78 extends to the third phalanges whilst in ordinary dogs it extends only to the second. In two Newfoundland dogs which I examined, when the toes were stretched apart and viewed on the under side, the skin extended in a nearly straight line between the outer margins of the balls of the toes; whereas, in two terriers of distinct sub-breeds, the skin viewed in the same manner was deeply scooped out. . . .. As aquatic animals which belong to quite different orders have webbed feet, there can be no doubt that this structure would be serviceable to dogs that frequent the water. We may confidently infer that no man ever selected his water-dogs by the extent to which the skin was developed between their toes ; but what he does, is to preserve and breed from those individuals which hunt best in the water, or best retrieve wounded game, and thus he unconsciously selects dogs with feet slightly better webbed. . . . Man thus closely imitates Natural Selection. (41 - 42)
Discussing how dogs change over time and geographical distance, Darwin points how dogs that their origin in one country often change so much in other countries that they have little connection to their original breed. He uses the Newfoundland as one of his examples:
A nearly parallel case is offered by the Newfoundland dog, which was certainly brought into England from that country, but which has since been so much modified that, as several writers have observed, it does not now closely resemble any existing native dog in Newfoundland. (44)
Darwin footnotes this remark with several references to earlier works and includes this statement: "The Newfoundland dog is believed to have originated from a cross between the Esquimaux dog and a large French hound."
The remaining reference to Newfoundlands is simply a comparison of a the size of Indian donkeys to Newfoundlands.
This book was reviewed in Sporting Magazine in 1868, which made an observation of its own about Newfoundlands: "Extreme cold is equally prejudicial to some animals, neither the Newfoundland dog nor the bloodhound being capable of enduring the intense frigidity of the forests of Nothern Europe" (299). The review also repeats Darwin's statement that "The Newfoundland-dog is supposed to have originated from a cross between the Esquimaux-dog and a large French hound" (300).