16 ARKIV FÖR ZOOLOGI. BAND 12. N:0 13. 



As Port Famine is situated on the Brunswick Peninsula it 

 is perhaps not quite correct to call the natives of that place 

 »Fuegians», but undoubtedly the Indians on both sides of 

 the Straits of Magellan led a similar life, and it is of in terest 

 to have it stated, that dögs were kept at that time as well 

 on Tierra del Fuego as on the adjoining parts of the con- 

 tinent. 



Nevertheless even if the dögs thus have been introduced 

 to Tierra del Fuego in praedarwinian time, it is not, of course, 

 excluded that they could have been brought to these countries 

 by some early European pioneers. The Spaniard Sarmiento 

 tried for instance as early as about 1584 — 85 to establish a 

 settlement just at Port Famine, although he failed. 



It is, however, not at all necessary to assume that the 

 dögs now kept by the Indians living at the Straits of Magellan 

 have been introduced from Europé, as in several different 

 parts of South America domesticated dögs were kept in 

 prsecolumbian time. Tschudi^ in quoting Garcilaso de la 

 Vega draws the attention to the fact that domesticated 

 dögs were of very great importance to, among others, the 

 nation Huanca already centuries before the Spaniards had 

 arrived to Peru. Tschudi also points out that skeletons 

 and mummies of dögs are to be found in prsehistoric Indian 

 graves, especially in those parts of Peru which were inhabited 

 by the Huancas. Tschudi named this kind of dog Canis 

 ingce. These dögs have låter on been studied by several 

 scientists, and especially by Nehring, who has shown that 

 the domestication of them had gone so far that several 

 different races had been developed. Nehring declares: »Nach 

 meinem Urtheil, welches sich auf ein verhältnissmässig sehr 

 reiches Material stiitzt, stammen die Inka-Hunde nicht von 



irgend einer siidamerikanischen Canis-ÅTt ab» . This 



is thus a similar conclusion as that to which I have arrived 

 with regard to the Yaghan dog. As probable ancestors of 

 the Inka dögs Nehring ^ thinks, that some of the smaller 

 southern races of Canis occidentalis may be taken into 

 consideration, but it does not seem him impossible, that 

 partly Canis latrans to some degree has contributed to the 

 ancestry of these dögs as well. 



^ Fauna Peruana, p. 247. 



' Zool. Jahrb. (Abth. Syst.), Bd. 3, p. 51—58. 



