128 , BRITISH MAMMALS 



is rather convex (a trait which often comes out in domestic dogs). 

 The muzzle is shorter than in the wolf, and there is long hair 

 between the pads of the feet. Moreover the general colour of 

 these dogs (except for the winter coat of the Siberian species) 

 almost always tends to bright red-brown, a colour constantly- 

 represented in breeds of domestic dog or in the dingo. On the 

 whole, the most dog-like of this Cyonoid group at the present 

 day is the Siberian Canis alpinus^ and the most aberrant the 

 buansu, or dhol, of India. The dingo would almost seem to 

 represent a collateral descendant of this group which had retained 

 the third lower molar and had lost the extra pair of teats.^ Prob- 

 ably the dingo of Australia (to which the semi-domesticated 

 dogs, and even the pariah dogs of India and Western Asia, are 

 nearly allied) represents one of the parent forms of Canis 

 familiaris^ while the other parent of the domestic dog has been the 

 wolf The mingling of these two breeds, together, possibly, 

 with a dash of the jackal, has produced all the breeds of domestic 

 dog in existence. Some of these breeds, like the Eskimo dog 

 and the dogs of the Indians in the South-western States of North 

 America, have been derived direct from domesticated wolves, 

 while other breeds of native dogs in Central and South America 

 are akin to jackal-like types of wild dog belonging to the genus 

 Cants. I have seen in Achill Island, off the west coast of Ireland, 

 dogs which were simply stunted wolves, exactly resembling the 

 wolf in colour, in brush, in the shape of the ears, and in the 

 arrangement of the masses of hair along the line of the back. 



The Cyonoid dogs are, as has been mentioned, somewhat 

 marked off from the Wolf group by their red colour. The male, 

 however, and sometimes the female, generally develops a blacken- 

 ing of the coat over the neck and shoulders and along the back 

 to the tip of the tail. The wolves and jackals are more nearly 



chiefly terriers, there are nifie — four on one side, five on the other. In some 

 fox terriers and (according to the author's investigations) in smaller toy breeds 

 the number is reduced to four pairs. 



^ But it is said that there are sometimes six pairs of teats in the female 

 dingo. 



