ALLEN: DOGS OF THK AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 485 



While some naturalists have thus sought to derive the Domestic Dog 

 from Wolf, Jackal, Coyote, or Fox, or from a mixture of two or three 

 of these, others have maintained that it is quite as well entitled to be 

 considered a distinct species with its various artificial breeds. Buffon 

 was one of the first to support this N'iew. Pictet (ISoo, 1, p. 203-210) 

 believed that do^remains from ca\e-(leposits in Europe prol)ably 

 represented the wild ancestor of domestic dogs, and to this wild 

 species he gave the name Cams fainUiaris fossili.s. In this he was 

 followed by Bourguignat (lS7o) who regarded the Prehistoric Dog as 

 a species, related to the Wolf but coexistent with it in a wild state. 

 He applied to it tiie name Cauls fcrus, and concluded from the relative 

 scarcity of its remains in the earlier strata of human culture, that it 

 was at first seldom domesticated by the early cave-men. Remains of 

 Pliocene canids from central France have been suggested by Boule 

 (1889) as representing the progenitors of the Domestic Dog. 



Although the recent and more exact studies of Miller (1912, ]). 313) 

 and Gidley (1913, p. 99) have shown that the Domestic Dog nuiy be 

 distinguished l)y dental characters from Coyote, Jackal, and Fox, its 

 close relationship to the wolves is shown, as they point out, l)y the 

 shorter and narrower heel of the lower carnassial in proportion to the 

 length and width of the remaining part, the general bluntness and 

 plumpness of the premolar and molar teeth and their cusps, as well 

 as by the shorter and blunter canines. , Other less constant but 

 average distinctions are tai)ulated by the latter author. A noticeable 

 character of the lower tooth-row in Wolf and Dog may also be men- 

 tioned, namely, its distinctly outward bend at the junction of the 

 molar and premolar series, whereas in the Coyote and the Jackal, the 

 axis of the tooth-row is much more nearly a straight line. The 

 presence of a minute second posterior cusp in addition to the cingu- 

 lum in the fourth lower premolar is characteristic of Jackal and Coyote. 



The relationship of the Domestic Dog having thus been found to 

 be wholly with the Wolf, and not with Jackal, or Coyote, it remains 

 for future investigation to show what wolf-like ancestor was its wild 

 progenitor. This, however, lies outside the scope of the present 

 paper. Yet it may l)e said that no evidence has hitherto been ad- 

 duced that clearly indicates the origin of the Dog from any of th(> 

 large wolves of circumboreal distribution. In general the skull of 

 the Dog is at once distinguished from that of the Wolf, apart from its 

 usually smaller size, by the higher forehead of the former. That this, 

 however, is due to greater de^■elopment of the cerebrum through 

 domestication has been suggested by Hammeran (lS9o), notwith- 



