CAXIS FAMILIAEIS. 171 



have no reason or disposition to dispute the truth of his view, we 

 can only regard it as conjectural. 



The opinions of naturalists differ much as to this matter. Professor 

 Dr. John X. Woldrich thinks * that the Domestic Dog of Europe can no 

 more be traced to existing wild European species of Jackal, Wolf, or 

 Fox, than the existing European races of man can be traced to existin*^ 

 wild tribes. He thinks that the ancestors of the European Do" no 

 longer exist in Europe, though they may do so in Asia or Africa. He 

 suggests the probability of their derivation from Diluvial predecessors of 

 C. simensis and C. zerda. 



As to the Domestic Dogs of America, as Rengger remarks f, it is 

 certain that at the time of its discovery the natives had already a race 

 of domestic dog. Such were found by Alonso Herera in ^^vi Granada 

 and by Garcilasso in Peru. The Mexicans also had dogs which 

 they used as food. It seems to us, however, impossible to deterniine 

 whether such races really originated from the wild species of the New 

 Continent, or were brought by man from Asia in very ancient times. 



This doubt, however, does not exist in the minds of some very able 

 naturalists. Thus Dr. Elliott Cones observes % : — " We have .... 

 unquestionable evidence of relationship by direct descent of some Indian 

 Dogs from the Coyote " (C. latrans). And, as we have before stated, 

 the Indians habitually cross their dogs with this species. 



As to the race of Dogs which belonged to the Incas of Peru (the 

 Canis IngcB of Tschudi) and were preserved as mummies, Nehring ^, 

 who has eighteen specimens, thinks that the animal was derived from 

 the Xorth-American Wolf, and certainly not from any South-American 

 species. 



The opinion at which Darwin arrived , after con si derin j;Jhejnass of 

 evidence he had accumulated, was that the Domestic Dog had a multiple 

 orig in, -^^tE arTTafose from "several races of Wolves and Jackals, an d 

 from _ at least one or two "South-Amencan species. WitE~this view 



* SeeAnzeiger d. kaiser. Akad. d. 'Wissenschaftcn, xxiii. Jahrgang, 1886, pp. 12-lf>. 



t Naturgeschichte der SaugetMere von Paraguay, p. 151. 



% American Naturalist, vol. vii. 1873, p. 388. 



§ Zoolosische Jahrbiicher, Biologie, vol. iii. (1888), p. 51. 



Z2 



