NO. 5 MAMMALS FROM DOMINICAN REPUBLIC MILLER I 5 



he gives an extended account of the dogs formerly and at the time 

 of his residence (i 536-1 546) occurring on the island of Hispaniola. 

 Parts of this account I translate as follows : " Domestic cur dogs 

 were found in this island of Hispaniola and in all the other islands 

 of these seas (inhabited by Christians). They were bred by the Indians 

 in their houses. At present there are none ; but when they had them 

 the Indians used them to capture all the other animals [that is, the 

 hutia, the quemi, the mohuy and the cori] that have been spoken of 

 in the preceding sections. These dogs were of all the colors that dogs 

 have in Spain ; some of a single color and others spotted with white and 

 blackish or reddish or ruddy or any color that the coat is accustomed 

 to have in Castile. Some woolly, others silky, others short-haired ; 

 but the most of them between silky and short-haired, and the hair 

 of all of them more harsh than our dogs have, and the ears lively 

 and alert like those of wolves. All of these dogs, here in this island 

 and the other islands, were mute, and even though they might be 

 beaten and killed they did not know how to bark : some of them yelped 

 or whined when they were hurt." 



Continuing, he tells us that he has seen dogs of the same kind on 

 the mainland in the province of Santa Marta as well as in Nicaragua, 

 and that in the latter country the natives regularly used them as food. 

 He makes no mention of the eating of dogs by the natives of 

 Hispaniola, and the complete absence of bones of this animal from 

 the collections made by us in the Samana region and by Theodoor 

 de Booy at San Pedro de Macoris makes it seem probably that this 

 habit did not exist, or at least that it was not very general. If the 

 dumb dog was anything else than a special breed of Canis familiaris 

 we have as yet no evidence of the fact. 



The five animals thus described are, Oviedo insists (p. 391), the 

 only furred terrestrial quadrupeds, other than rats or mice, native to 

 Hispaniola. It therefore seems evident that he knew nothing about 

 Solenodon or the ground sloth. 



With regard to the mice, which he believed to be indigenous, there 

 is no reason to suppose that they were not brought over by the 

 Spaniards themselves. No native mammal the size of a mouse, except 

 Nesophontes, has been found in any owl deposit or kitchenmidden on 

 the island, and it seems improbable to the highest degree that this 

 small insectivore could have been the animal known to Oviedo and 

 supposed by him to have been spontaneously generated from some 

 kind of corruption in this remote part of the world. 



