ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 101 



xolotl, servant or slave). On American dogs, see Smith Barton's 

 Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsylvania, p. i. p. 34. 



The result of Tschudi's researches on the American indigenous 

 races of "dogs is the following. There are two kinds almost spe- 

 cifically different : 1. The Canis caraibicus of Lesson, quite without 

 hair, except a small bunch of white hair on the forehead and at the 

 point of the tail, of a slate gray color, and silent ; it was found by 

 Columbus in the Antilles, by Cortes in Sejpjfi^j 4nrt by Pizaj-rJ/ in 

 Peru, where it suffers from the cold of the Cordilleras, but js still 

 abundant in the warmer parts of the* .courtr^ uiister' the Taartje ;cf 

 perros chinos. 2. The Canis ingse, with pointed nose and pointed 

 ears ; this kind barks : it is now employed in the care of cattle, and 

 shows many varieties of colors, from being crossed with European 

 breeds. The Canis ingae follows man to the high regions of the 

 Cordilleras. In ancient Peruvian graves his skeleton is sometimes 

 found resting at the feet of the human mummy. We know how 

 often the carvers of monuments in our own middle ages employed 

 the figure of a dog in this position, as an emblem of fidelity. ( J. J. 

 v. Tschudi, Untersuchungen iiber die Fauna Peruana, s. 247-251.) 

 At the very beginning of the Spanish conquests, European dogs 

 became wild in the islands of San Domingo and Cuba. (Grarcilasso, 

 p. i. 1723, p. 326.) In the prairies between the Meta, the Arauca, 

 and the Apure, voiceless dogs (perros mudos) were eaten in the 16th 

 century. Alonso de Herrara, who, in 1535, undertook an expe- 

 dition to the Orinoco, says the natives called them " Majos" or 

 "Auries." A well-informed traveller, Giesecke, found the same 

 non-barking variety of dog in Greenland. The Esquimaux dogs 

 pass their lives entirely in the open air ; at night they scrape holes 

 for themselves in the snow ; they howl like wolves, in accompani- 

 ment with a dog that sits in the middle of the circle and sets them 

 off. In Mexico the dogs were subjected to an operation to make 

 them fatter and better eating. On the borders of the province of 

 Durango, and farther to the north on tl^e slave lake, the natives, 

 formerly at least, conveyed their tents of "buffalo skins on the backs 

 of large dogs when changing their -place of residence with the 

 change of season. All these traits resemble the customs of the 



9* 



