Chap. I. THEIR PARENTAGE. 31 



from several distinct species, are, as far as is known, mutually 

 fertile together. But, as Broca has well remarked, 44 the 

 fertility of successive generations of mongrel dogs has never 

 been scrutinised with that care which is thought indispensable 

 when species are crossed. The few facts leading to the conclu- 

 sion that the sexual feelings and reproductive powers differ in 

 the several races of the dog when crossed are (passing over 

 mere size as rendering propagation difficult) as follows : the 

 Mexican Alco 45 apparently dislikes dogs of other kinds, but 

 this perhaps is not strictly a sexual feeling ; the hairless 

 endemic dog of Paraguay, according to Bengger, mixes less 

 with the European races than these do with each other; the 

 Spitz-dog in Germany is said to receive the fox more readily 

 than do other breeds ; and Dr. Hodgkin states that a female 

 Dingo in England attracted the male wild foxes. If these 

 latter statements can be trusted, they prove some degree of 

 sexual difference in the breeds of the dog. But the fact remains 

 that our domestic dogs, differing so widely as they do in ex- 

 ternal structure, are far more fertile together than we have 

 reason to believe their supposed wild parents would have been. 

 Pallas assumes 46 that a long course of domestication eliminates 

 that sterility which the parent-species would have exhibited if 

 only lately captured ; no distinct facts are recorded in support of 

 this hypothesis ; but the evidence seems to me so strong (inde- 

 pendently of the evidence derived from other domesticated 

 animals) in favour of our domestic dogs having descended from 

 several wild stocks, that I am led to admit the truth of this 

 hypothesis. 



There is another and closely allied difficulty consequent on 

 the doctrine of the descent of our domestic dogs from several 

 wild species, namely, that they do not seem to be perfectly 

 fertile with their supposed parents. But the experiment has 

 not been quite fairly tried ; the Hungarian dog, for instance, 



•• U o^ Umal de k Ph y siol °g ie .' torn. Deutschlands,' 1801, b. i. s. 638. With 



U ' P ;f M ro „.„, „ respect to Dr. Hodgkin's statement 



* u \ , n lsexcellent account made before Brit. Assoc, see 'The 



of tins breed mGosses 'Jamaica,' p. Zoologist,' vol. iv., for 1845-46, p. 



33S ; Rengger s ' Saeugethiere von Para- 1097 



goay,' s. 153 With respect to Spitz ™ '< Acta Acad. St. Petersburg^- 



dogs, see Bechstems « Naturgesch. 1780, part ii. pp. 84, 100. 



