Al.LF.X: DOGS OF I III. AMKKUAX ABOUIGIM'.S. 47!) 



Kiiropoaii, seems to be that oF Fraiiciseo Hernandez, wlio lived 

 between the years loll: and 1578. His Historia Ainniahum vt Minera- 

 lium Novae Hispaniae, is printed on 9G folio pafj;es as part of llecchi 

 and Lynceus's Reruni Mediearum Novae Hisj)aniae Thesaurus, 

 1651, which was apparently intended as a monoffrapliie ehil)oratiou 

 of Hernandez's work. This writer brought back an aecoinit of three 

 sorts of <loj;;s, wliieh were in his day kept by the native Mexicans. 

 The first of these he had himself seen, but tlie two others he had 

 neither seen, nor known of their having been brought to Europe. 

 This first sort he states, is called the Xoloj/tzcuinlli and is larger than 

 the others, exceeding three feet in body length, but with the peculi- 

 arity of having no hairy co\ering, yet with a soft skin, spotted with 

 fulvous and sjate color. (" Prinuis Xoloytzcuintli \ ocatus alios 

 corporis vincit magnitudine, quae tres plerum; excedit cubitos, sed 

 habet peculiare nullis pilis tegi, verum molli tantuni, ac depili cuti, 

 fiduo atque C'yaneo colore maculata."). The two other sorts of dogs 

 were the hump-backed or Michuacan dog and the Techichi, elsewhere 

 discussed. TJie Xoloi/izcui}}{Ii of Hernandez is clearly the Hairless 

 Dog, and a most elaborate account of the animal is given by Recchi 

 and Lynceus (1651, p. 479 ff.) with a fairly recognizable figure (Plate 2, 

 fig. 1). These authors apparently had an actual specimen, possibly 

 one brought aVne to Europe; at all events they describe its appearance 

 as fierce and wolf-like, with a few bristly hairs about the mouth, the 

 mammae ten as in the wolf and dog, and the vertebrae of the same 

 number as in a dog-skeleton with which they compared it, namely 

 seven cervicals, thirteen dorsals, se\en lumbosacral, se\enteen caud- 

 als. They name the animal Lupus vwxicanus in contradistinction 

 to their Alco or Cauls mrxicana, which was probably a Raccoon. 

 This name appears in zoological nomenclature in the twelfth edition 

 of Linne's Systema naturae under the genus Canis. The diagnosis, 

 evidently based on the figure and description just noticed, reads: 

 "C. Cauda deflexa laevi, corpore cinereo fasciis fuscis maculisque 

 fulvis variegata"; the habitat is given as the warmer parts of Mexico. 

 Linne's first reference is to Brisson, whose description — " Canis 

 cinereus, maculis fulvis variegatus" — is clearly from the same 

 source. Hitherto Linne's Cauis vie.vicanus has been regarded as 

 applying to the wolf of Southern Mexico, but no true wolf is known 

 from that part of the country. Miller (1912a) seems to have been the 

 first to question the propriety of using the name for a wolf, but leaves 

 the matter unsettled, saying that according to E. W. Nelson, "the 

 wolf of the southern end of the [Mexican tableland became extinct 



