CANIS 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 N. 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 existing 

 wild tribes. He thinks that the ancestors of the European Dog 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 Uengger 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 New Granada 

 and by^-GarcHanno in Por-tu. The Mexicans also had dogs which 

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

 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 Coues 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 Inga of Tschudi) and were preserved as mummies, Nehring , 

 wJioJias eighteen specimens, thinks that the animal was derived from 

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

 species. 



The opinion at which Darwin arrived, after considering the mass of 

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

 origin, that it arose from several races of Wolves and Jackals, and 

 from at least one or two South- American species. With this view 



* See Anzeiger d. kaiser. Akad. d. "Wissenschaften, xxiii. Jahrgang, 1886, pp. 12-10. 



f Naturgeschichte der Siiugethiere von Paraguay, p. 151. 



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



Zoologische Jahrbiicher, Biologie, vol. iii. (1888), p. 51. 



z2 



