474 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



yellowish coloring with darker areas. In a more extensive article 

 Nehring (lS84a) gives a particular account of the dogs of Ancon. 

 He first transcribes passages from Garcilasso de la Vega to show that 

 the Incas had dogs previous to the Spanish conquest, and that the 

 dog entered into certain religious rites of the Incas. A munmiified 

 dog is described as having thick hair, shorter, however, on head and 

 feet, thickest on neck and breast forming a kind of mane.~ The color 

 was yellow, clear or soiled in places, with irregular brown-shaded areas. 

 The tail was thick and bushy, wolf-like, also yellow. The ears of 

 most of the specimens seemed to ha^■e been clipped. He suggests the 

 North American Wolf or Coyote as the original source of the Inca 

 dogs, but there seems no ground for the selection of either as an 

 immediate ancestor. 



More recently, Eaton (1916, p. 25) has recorded the discovery of 

 dog-mummies with pre-Columbian burials at Machu Picchvi, Peru. 

 He adds that " dogs of this general type, though usually a little smaller 

 than those figured in Reiss and Stiibel's Necropolis of Ancon, were 

 frequently seen in the parts of the Cordillera that I visited, and these 

 animals may be largely derived from the ancient stock. . . The 

 modern Indian dogs of this ancient type are very wolf-like and mani- 

 fest a most inconvenient fear of the camera." He suggests the obvious 

 possibility of present-day mixture with breeds imported from 

 Europe, and gives a reproduction (p. 50, fig. 47) of a photograph 

 showing dimly an Indian with his dog. 



The fine series of Peruvian dog-skulls in the U. S. X. ^I. contains 

 nine that show complete gradation in size between the smallest (which 

 I have considered more or less typical of the Techichi) and the largest 

 which represents the Inca Dog. Since these skulls are more or less 

 comparable as to age, it seems likely that the gradation in size is due 

 to free interbreeding of the two sorts of dogs. The largest skull of 

 the series (U. S. N. M. 176,309, of which the measurements have been 

 given) is almost precisely matched by the skull of a Common Indian 

 Dog from Peel River, Arctic America, collected by Robert Kenni- 

 cott about 1860 (U. S. N. M. 6,219). The only obvious differences 

 are that the palate of the Inca Dog shows the peculiar thickened ridges 

 at the posterior end and is much narrower across the occipital con- 

 dyles. The latter characteristic is shared by the other dog-skulls 

 from Peru in contrast with the northern dogs, and is no doubt among 

 the latter a result of their use as sledge-dogs, for the greater develop- 

 ment of the neck and chest muscles in hauling might well enough 

 demand a broader support from the skull. This general similarity 



