Polynesian Dog — Luomala 
199 
the Society Islands is identical in both his Ger- 
man (1778, I: 285-286) and English (1777, 
I: 377-378) editions, but the former is more 
often cited by the German classifiers. Of an 
exploratory walk that he and Dr. Anders Sparr- 
man took on Huahine, Society Islands, in Sep- 
tember, 1773, he states: 
On this walk we saw great numbers of hogs, 
dogs, and fowls. The last roamed about at pleas- 
ure through the woods, and roosted on fruit- 
trees; the hogs were likewise allowed to run 
about, but received regular portions of food, 
which were commonly distributed by old 
women. We observed one of them in particular, 
feeding a little pig with the sour fermented 
bread-fruit paste, called mahei; she held the pig 
with one hand, and offered it a tough porks 
skin, but as soon as it opened the mouth to snap 
at it, she contrived to throw a handful of the 
sour paste in, which the little animal would not 
take without this strategem. The dogs in spite 
of their stupidity were in high favour with all 
the women, who could not have nursed them 
with a more ridiculous affection, if they had 
really been ladies of fashion in Europe. We were 
witnesses of a remarkable instance of kindness, 
when we saw a middle aged woman, whose 
breasts were full of milk, offering them to a 
little puppy which had been trained up to suck 
them. We were so much surprised at this sight, 
that we could not help expressing our dislike 
of it; but she smiled at our observation, and 
added, that she suffered little pigs to do the 
same service. Upon enquiry, however, we found 
that she had lost her child, and did her the justice 
amongst ourselves to acknowledge that this 
expedient was very innocent and formerly prac- 
ticed in Europe. The dogs of all these islands 
were short, and their sizes vary from that of a 
lap-dog to the largest spaniel. Their head is 
broad, the snout pointed, the eyes very small, 
the ears upright, and their hair rather long, lank, 
hard, and of different colours, but most com- 
monly white and brown. They seldom if ever 
barked, but howled sometimes, and were shy of 
strangers to a degree of aversion. 
Early classifiers, being interested in descrip- 
tion rather than in causes of variation in the 
Polynesian dog, ignore the Forsters’ opinions on 
why Polynesian dogs acted differently from Eu- 
ropean dogs and what effects such external 
factors as food, care, education, and climate had 
on them. These opinions are first shots, broad 
and random, at an important problem. Almost 
7 5 years were to pass before the classifiers began 
to take a dynamic view about the peculiarities 
of the Polynesian dog. 
J. R. Forster (1778: 200-201, 372) writes 
that the individuals in the animal kingdom in 
the South Seas show less variety than those in 
the plant kingdom: 
Domestication, the great cause of degeneracy 
in so many of our animals, in the first place, is 
here confined to three species; the hog, dog, 
and cock; and secondly, it is in fact next to a 
state of nature in these isles. . . . The dog being 
here merely kept to be eaten, is not obliged to 
undergo the slavery, to which the varieties of 
that species are forced to submit in our polished 
countries; he lies at his ease all the day long, 
is fed at certain times, and nothing more is 
required of him; he is therefore not altered from 
his state of nature in the least; is probably in- 
ferior in all the sensitive faculties to any wild 
dog ( which may perhaps be owing to his food ) , 
and certainly, in no degree, partakes of the 
sagacity and quick perception of our refined 
variety. 
He also notes that the hogs and dogs "are 
very prolific, thrive in the fine climate amazingly 
well, and soon come to maturity. . . 
George Forster (1777, I: 235, 243), after 
remarking that "it is owing to the time we spend 
on the education of dogs that they acquire those 
eminent qualities which attach them so much 
to us . . suggests that the fish or vegetable 
diet has altered canine disposition to make Poly- 
nesian dogs stupid. Such education as they get, 
he says, has "perhaps likewise grafted new in- 
stincts” that have led New Zealand dogs to eat 
the dead of their own species and the remains 
of their masters’ cannibal feasts. 
Until 1922 when George M. Thomson in- 
corporated it into his monograph on New Zea- 
land plants and animals, the following descrip- 
tion by Crozet was generally overlooked by clas- 
sifiers outside of New Zealand. Of the dogs that 
he saw in 1772 in New Zealand, Crozet (Roth, 
1891: 76) writes: 
They have absolutely no other domestic animal 
than the dog. The dogs are a sort of domesticated 
fox, quite black or white, very low on the legs, 
straight ears, thick tail, long body, full jaws but 
more pointed than that of the fox, and uttering 
