544 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



it. They must have been the original of the domestic dog, or 

 the descendants of stray dogs gone wild. 



It is not very clear if the crossing of Lupus cervarius 

 and the wolf, or of the dog and wolf, is meant. I am much 

 inclined to think Luj^us cervarms was the badger. It is said 

 that the wolf and the dog are fertile together. The jackal 

 must have been extinct in Europe long before the time of the 

 Eomans, although remains of an extinct species have been 

 found in Britain, together with those of the cave-bear, sabre- 

 toothed lion, and other curious animals. 



Mr. W. H. Skinner, surveyor. New Plymouth, Taranaki, has 

 kindly furnished me with the following account of a dogskin 

 mat which is in his possession at the present time : — 



" New Plymouth, 14th February, 1891. 



"Mr. Taylor White: Dear Sir, — I am sending under 

 separate cover a rough sketch of dogskin mat. I find it a 

 most difficult matter to hit off the colouring, and nothing short 

 of seeing the mat itself would be satisfactory. The mat was 

 bought by myself from Whakatau, a chief of the Taranaki 

 Tribe. This man's age, I should think, w^ould be from seventy- 

 five to eighty years. The mat was made by his father, 

 Kawahotane. The skins were obtained and cured by this 

 man's father, or the grandfather of Whakatau ; so that these 

 dogs must have been killed at least eighty years ago. This 

 would accord with Te Whiti's statement that the mat was at 

 least eighty years old. Such being the case, these skins cannot 

 possibly be other than those from the native dog, as explained 

 in my first letter. 



" I am surprised that Mr. Colenso takes up the line that 

 the native dog was a small miserable cur. From conversa- 

 tions held with intelligent natives I gather that the old Maori 

 dog was by no means a small animal, but a very fine animal 

 indeed, and good-looking withal ; but in one respect they 

 differed greatly from our European dogs, and that was, 

 they had no bark such as our dogs, and they never ofi^ered to 

 bite any one, or, as the Maori explained, never got into a 



rage. 



Some twenty years ago Captain Good, then living at 

 Urenui, in this district, found the skeleton of a Maori dog 

 which had evidently been buried with some show of respect. 

 The bones were found in a small cave, and the remains of a 

 mat — a few fragments only — in which the dog had evidently 

 been wrapped, were lying around. This skeleton is either in 

 the Vv^elliiigton Museum or was sent to Copenhagen. Mr. 

 Good's address is Geo, near Opunake. He, no doubt, could 

 tell you if the dog was a small or a large one. Some nine 

 years ago, whilst surveying well up on the slopes of Mount 



