490 lULLETIX: Ml'SEX'M OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 



the three sorts of dogs in jNIexico. He adds further that the Indians 

 of Cozumel Island ate these dogs as the Spaniards do rabbits. Those 

 intended for this purpose were castrated in order to fatten them. 



Clavigero, the historian of early Mexico, wrote that the breed was 

 extinct in his time, due, as he supposes, to the Spaniards' having pro- 

 vided their markets with them in lieu of sheep and cattle. 



Possibly this breed of dog is the one mentioned in De Soto's relation 

 of his march through Florida. At one place the cacique of the village 

 sent him a present including "many conies and partridges. . . .many 

 dogs .... which were as much esteemed as though they had been fat 

 sheep." x\t another place, "the Christians being seen to go after 

 dogs, for their flesh, which the Indians do not eat, they ga\'e them 

 three hundred of these animals." Again, at a small Indian village 

 called Etocali, the expedition got " maize, beans, and little dogs, which 

 were no small relief to the people." 



As late as 1805, Barton (1805, p. 12) who had made special inquiry 

 of William Bartram, as to the dogs of the Florida Indians, quotes 

 him, that the latter had in addition to the larger dogs, a smaller breed, 

 about the size of a fox, which probably was of the type under discus- 

 sion. 



It is probably this dog, if not also the short-nosed Aariety, that 

 figures largely in the mythology of the Mayas of Yucatan. Among^ 

 several representations of the dog in the Mayan codices are seen short- 

 nosed and long-nosed heads, but whether these really indicate differ- 

 ent breeds of dogs or different artists that made them cannot be 

 determined. All are shown with erect, sometimes with cropped ears, 

 a tail that is of medium length, usually shaggy, and recurved. Black 

 patches are commonly represented on the body, and the eye of the 

 dog often centers in a black area. Seler (1890) speaks of its use as a 

 sacrificial animal in Yucatan, sometimes in place of a human being. 

 Placed in the grave, the dog carried its master's soul across the " Chi- 

 cunauhapan" or nine-fold flowing stream. According to Sahagun, 

 some were black and white, others dark red, and there were short- 

 haired and long-haired dogs, but he does not state whether the small 

 and the large types of dogs each had short-haired and long-haired 

 ^•arieties. A brief summary of the significance of the dog in the 

 religious life of the ]\Iayas is given by Tozzer and Allen (1910, p. 359). 



