Natural History. — Zoology. 377 
ced their dogs, which were so numerous on the continent, ac- 
cording to Oviedo ; that at the present day, in the same coun- 
tries, the natives train to the chase the wild dog of Cayenne, the 
Cams Thoris of Linnaeus ; that there is no proof of the Caribs 
having ever had any thing /common in their origin or relations 
with the old conjtinent ; thaCfheir domestic dogs, therefore, had 
come from a wifd'>: species indigenous in their country, and that 
this species is necessarily either the grey wolf of Paraguay, the 
guaiacha of Brasil, or the wild dog of Cayenne, which is taiped 
at the present day, and which readily breeds with all the varie- 
ties of domestic dogs ; that in the Papua Islands and in Austral- 
asia, there exists a wild species, the Papua dog or dingo, the 
resemblance of whose skull to that of our mastifs is not a deci- 
sive proof of the unity of the species, since resemblances equally 
great are very numerous among many widely separated species 
of mamraifera, as has been so often established by M. Cuvier in 
his Ossemens Fossiles. Admitting the proofs already exposed 
by Guldenstaedt {Nov. Commen. Petrop. t. SO), of the derivation 
of the domestic dog from the jackal ; but, considering that it is 
impossible to derive from the jackal, either those dogs which 
existed previously to their discovery in the Antilles and in both 
Americas, or the Papou dog, or the woolly dog of the Esqui- 
maux, &c. ; that Buffon has himself proved the fecundity of 
the connections of the domestic dog with the wolf, that conse- 
quently the blood of the wolf must have produced many of our 
large varieties, that the fox has also been in some measure ming- 
led with them, as was known in the days of Aristotle ; and that 
thus, exclusive of the jackal, there are three wild species in 
Europe and western Asia, which have contributed to produce 
varietiess'^our domestic dogs: M. Desmoulins thence con- 
cludes, that the numerous races of domestic dogs must be refer- 
red each in its own country to different wild species ; that, how- 
ever, the emigrations along with man, of each of these species of 
domesticated dogs, have produced crosses of one domestic spe- 
cies with another, and races which have thence resulted some- 
times with another, and sometimes with one or more of the wild 
species. Now, we know that the combination of the five wild 
species indicated, with all the domestic races, could easily give 
a still greater number of distinct races than the fifty or sixty at 
