ALLEN: DOGS OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGLNES. 479 



European, seems to be that of PVaneisco Hernandez, who lived 

 between the years 1514 and 1578. His Historia AniniaHum et Minera- 

 lium Novae Hispaniae, is printed on 96 folio pages as part of Recchi 

 and Lyneeus's Rerinn ^Vledicariim Novae Hispaniae Thesaurus, 

 1651, which was apparently intended as a monographic elaboration 

 of Hernandez's work. This writer brought l)ack an account of three 

 sorts of dogs, which were in his day kept by the native Mexicans. 

 The first of these he had himself seen, but the two others he had 

 neither seen, nor known of their having been ])r()ught to Europe. 

 This first sort he states, is called the Xoloytzcuinili and is larger than 

 the others, exceeding three feet in body length, but with the peculi- 

 arity of having no hairy covering, yet with a soft skin, spotted with 

 fulvous and slate color. (" Primus Xoloytzcuintli \ocatus alios 

 corporis vincit magnitudine, c^uae tres plerum; excedit cubitos, .sed 

 habet peculiare nuUis pilis tegi, verum molli tantum, ac depili cuti, 

 fuluo atque Cyaneo colore maculata."). The two other sorts of <logs 

 were the hump-backed or Michuacan dog and the Techichi, elsewhere 

 discussed. The XoloyizcuinUi of Hernandez is clearly the Hairless 

 Dog, and a most elaborate account of the animal is given by Recchi 

 and Lynceus (1651, p. 47C ft'.) with a fairly recognizable figure (Plate 2, 

 fig. 1). These authors apparently had an actual specimen, possibly 

 one brought alive to Europe; at all events they describe its appearance 

 as fierce and wolf -like, with a few bristly hairs about the mouth, the 

 mammae ten as in the wolf and dog, and the vertebrae of the same 

 number as in a dog-skeleton with which they compared it, namely 

 seven cervicals, thirteen dorsals, seven lumbosacrals, seventeen caud- 

 als. They name the animal Lupus mc.vicamis in contradistinction 

 to their Alco or Cauls ituwicana, which was probably a Raccoon. 

 This name appears in zoiilogical nomenclature in the twelfth edition 

 of Linne's Systema naturae under the genus Canis. The diagnosis, 

 evidently based on the figure and description just noticed, reads: 

 " C. Cauda deflexa lae\i, corpore cinereo fasciis fuscis maculisque 

 fulvis variegata"; the habitat is given as the warmer parts of Mexico. 

 Linne's first reference is to Brisson, whose description — " Canis 

 cinereus, maculis fulvis variegatus" — is clearly from the same 

 source. Hitherto Linne's Canis vw.vicanus has been regarded as 

 applying to the wolf of Southern ^Mexico, }>ut no true wolf is known 

 from that part of the country. Miller (1912a) seems to have been the 

 first to question the propriety of using the name for a wolf, but leaves 

 the matter unsettled, saying that according to E. W. Nelson, "the 

 wolf of the southern end of the Mexican tableland became extinct 



