8PECiS OF INDIAN DOGS. 509 



loss improperly be called ants' nests, is in much request in a 

 region whose inhabitants are of so turbulent a character. 

 A new species of ant, of a fine emerald-green (Formica 

 spinicollis), collects for its habitation a cotton-down, of a 

 yellowish-brown colour, and very soft to the touch, frou the 

 leaves of a melastomacea. I have no doubt that the yesca 

 or touchwood of ants of the Upper Orinoco (the animal is 

 found, we were assured, only south of Atures) will one day 

 become an article of trade. This substance is very superior 

 to the ants' nests of Cayenne, which are employed in the 

 hospitals of Europe, but can rarely be procured. 



On the 7th of June we took leave with regret of Father 

 Eamon Bueno. Of the ten missionaries whom we had found 

 in different parts of the vast extent of GKiiana, he alone ap- 

 peared to me to be earnestly attentive to all that regarded 

 the natives. He hoped to return in a short time to Madrid, 

 where he intended to publish the result of his researches 

 on the figures and characters that cover the rocks of Uruana. 



In the countries we had just passed through, between 

 the Meta, the Arauca, and the Apure, there were found, at 

 the time of the first expeditions to the Orinoco, in 1535, 

 those mute dogs, called by the natives maws, and auries. 

 This fact is curious in many points of view. We cannot 

 doubt that the dog, whatever Father Gili may assert, is 

 indigenous in South America. The different Indian lan- 

 guages furnish words to designate this animal, which are 

 scarcely derived from any European tongue. To this day 

 the word auri, mentioned three hundred years ago by 

 Alonzo de Herrera, is found in the Maypure. The dogs 

 we saw at the Orinoco may perhaps have descended from 

 those that the Spaniards carried to the coast of Caracas; 

 but it is not less certain that there existed a race of dogs 

 before the conquest, in Peru, in New Granada, and m 

 Guiana, resembling our shepherds' dogs. The allco of the 

 natives of Peru, and in general all the dogs that we found 

 in the wildest countries of South America, bark frequently. 

 The first historians, however, all speak of mute dogs (perroa 

 mudos). They still exist in Canada; and, what appears 

 to me worthy of attention, it was this dumb variety thai 

 was eaten in preference in Mexico,* and at the Orinoco. 



See, on the Mexican /ecAieAj, and on the numerous difficulties that 



