648 THE AMERICAN BOOK OF THE BOG. 



Shaw also quotes Mr. W. K. Taunton, describing the 

 Chinese Crested Dog, so called from having a crest of hair 

 running along the top of the head from front to back. In 

 addition to this, the dog has a tuft of hair at the end of his 

 tail, but otherwise, with the exception of a few scattering 

 hairs around the head and muzzle and just above the feet, 

 the dog is perfectly hairless, the skin being more or less 

 mottled in some specimens. There is another hairless dog, 

 said to come from China, considerably smaller than the breed 

 mentioned above, weighing about eight or ten pounds, and 

 without any hair at all. The head is like the apple-headed 

 Toy Terrier, with large bat-ears standing out from the 

 head, a very fine tail, and the skin of a uniform dark 

 color. 



Here we have several different names for apparently the 

 same kind of dog; for, although referred to as being native 

 in Africa, Brazil, Buenos Ay res, Turkey, India, and China, 

 and being, as we know, also found in Mexico and Southern 

 California, I believe they will be met in all warm climates. 

 Whether these various strains of hairless dogs found in 

 the various hot climates are of a common origin, whether 

 they have been distributed from some one country to the 

 others, or whether they are the result of the so-called law of 

 evolution, we can only conjecture. Whether in some quar- 

 ter of the globe a breed of dogs has always existed 

 none of which ever had hair, because they did not need 

 it, or whether they were once clothed with hair, which 

 gradually disappeared because they did not need it, who 

 can say ? If a strain of Pugs or Fox Terriers were colonized 

 in Central Africa and bred there for twenty-five, fifty, or a 

 hundred years, would their hair gradually disappear? Such 

 a supposition seems scarcely plausible, since the wild dogs 

 of India, many of whom live almost under the equator, are 

 thickly coated with hair, as are nearly all other quadrupeds 

 in hot countries. Why, then, should one breed of small 

 dogs exist in so many parts of the world entirely or nearly 

 hairless? Will some Darwin, some Tyndall, or some Huxley 

 kindly investigate and give us the why and the wherefore? 



