DOGS AND SAVAGES. 



By Dr. B. Langkavel, Hamburg. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 



In submitting to the readers of this journal the results of my studies 

 upon the relations between savages and the most important and widely 

 diffused of our domestic animals, I shall cite the sources of my informa- 

 tion. Of the 114 longer or shorter papers and notices that I have 

 written during the last fifteen years concerning the dog, 22 treat of the 

 Asiatic races, 4 of the African, 11 of the American, 4 of the Austral- 

 Polynesian, the remainder of the European. In all these papers my 

 principal aim was to determine the different races correctly. What- 

 ever I have gathered during this period from the widespread litera- 

 ture of geology, ethnology, and zoology concerning the relations 

 between dogs and savages will be presented briefly in the following 

 pages. 



The oft-raised question concerning the original home of the dog is, 

 so far as our knowledge reaches, well answered by the remark of 

 Alfred Nehring, 2 that "our most important domestic animals have 

 generally no single home," a saying that might in a certain sense be 

 paralleled by the old tradition of the Flatheads and others, that " when 

 the son of the Sun came to earth he was accompanied by a dog." 3 



The dog has been scattered over the entire earth for an immeasurable 

 length of time. Only in a very few localities is he entirely wanting or 

 very rare. Of these I have spoken at length in a paper published in 

 •the journal Der Hund of April 1, 1886, and I will state here what 

 has since become known to me, as it is important for the later discus- 

 sion of the question. In Asia the dog is very rare at Tarim, according 

 to Prschewalsky. 4 At Flores dogs and horses are so seldom seen that 



1 Translated from the Intern ation ales Archiv fur Ethnographic, Bel. VIII, 109-149, 



2 Zeitschr. fur Ethnologie, XX, 230. 



3 Lord, The Naturalist in Vancouver Island, II, 240. 



4 Peterniann's Ergiinzungsheft No. 53, p. 13. 



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