When I looked up the first animal to be domesticated, there was much variation, but the most popular answers were the dog, and the sheep, so here, on this card, we have the both of them, though the dog is at least a dog, whilst the sheep are rather far away on the hillside.
Sheep were descended from an Asian animal whose Latin name is Ovis gmelini, a kind of mouflon. They were probably chosen because they provided skins and wool for clothing and bedding, milk to drink, and meat, and their domestication seems to have begun in Mesopotamia between 11,000 and 9000 B.C., spreading to Greece and Italy, then spreading into Europe.
It seems most likely that the dog domesticated itself the moment the first human threw a bit of meat to a wolf. It provided companionship, early warning of incoming friends or foes, and, eventually, help with herding livestock. No wonder that Carl Linnaeus classified the domestic dog as Canis familiaris.
To our card, this is going to be the home page for the several sets issued by Godfrey Phillips along the titles of "Our Dogs" and "Our Puppies", simply because of the listing which appears in our original reference book to the issues of Godfrey Phillips, for that reads ;
- 110. OUR DOGS. Fronts printed by letterpress in colour. Backs in black, with descriptive text. The series was issued in three sizes :-
A. Titled series of 36. Small cards, size 67 x 37 m/m. Subjects selected from Medium Sized B below, and from "Our Puppies", item 113. Issued 1939
B. Titled series of 36. Medium cards, size 60 x 53 m/m. Home issue, 1936. cards of this series are found with numbers interchanged, i.e. same cards under different numbers.
C. Untitled set of 30. Post card size, 128 x 89 m/m. Backs in post card format. Home issue 1936. Fronts of series B and C are embossed, but unembossed cards are known.
It will be too long a job to list the permutations tonight, but the cards in our "B" series are as follows :
- The Gordon Setter
- Sealyham Puppy
- The Cocker Spaniel
- The Pekingese
- The Sealyham Terrier
- The Cairn Terrier
- The Irish Setter
- The Springer Spaniel
- Wire-haired Fox Terrier
- The Chow Chow
- The Labrador
- The Mastiff
- The Borzoi
- The Bulldog
- The Irish Wolfhound
- The Pointer
- The Dalmatian
- The Airedale
- The Greyhound
- The Bedlington Terrier
- The Foxhound
- The Deerhound
- The Border Terrier
- The Great Dane
- The Beagle
- The Golden Retriever
- The Dachshund
- The Bloodhound
- The Scottish Terrier
- Otterhound
And if anyone has any cards with different numbering do please let us know.
By the time of our original World Tobacco Issues Index, the listing was reduced, to just :
- "OUR DOGS". Nd. ... P50-117
A. Small (36)
B. Medium (30). Some number variations.
C. Postcard size and format. (30). Without series title. Adult dogs, back format identical with Set P50-120.B
Two things need adding from that listing, the first is that the "(30)" listed after our set is correct, they were wrongly entered as a set of 36 in the original Godfrey Phillips reference book, and the second is that "Set P50-120.B" is "Our Puppies", which you can read more about as our Card of the Day for the 6th of October 2024
The listing in our updated World Tobacco Issues Index is pretty much identical to the above, save new card codes, and it reads :
- "OUR DOGS". Nd. ... P521-462
A. Small (36)
B. Medium (30). Some number variations.
C. Postcard size and format. (30). Without series title. Adult dogs, back format identical with Set P521-468.B. See RB.113-110
And RB.113 is our new Godfrey Phillips reference book.