210 
PACIFIC SCIENCE, Vol. XIV, July I960 
taken, ( a female ) is now alive in the possession 
of the Marchioness of Salisbury, at Hattfield- 
House, and was sent over as a present to Mr. 
Nepean, from Governor Phillip. It has much of 
the same manners of the dog, but is of a very 
savage nature, and not likely to change in this 
particular. It laps like other dogs, but neither 
barks nor growls if vexed and teized; instead of 
which, it erects the hairs of the whole body 
like bristles, and seems furious: it is very eager 
after its prey, and is fond of rabbits or chickens, 
raw, but will not touch dressed meat. From its 
fierceness and agility it has greatly the advantage 
of other animals much superior in size . . . [ex- 
amples of its nearly killing a French fox-dog and 
an ass]. . . . 
A second of these is in the possession of Mr. 
Lascelles, of which we have received much the 
same account in respect to its ferocity; whence 
it is scarcely to be expected that this elegant 
animal will ever become familiar. 
The dingo is a hunter which runs down its 
prey before killing it. Its hunting ability con- 
trasts with that of the Polynesian native dogs, 
of which only the Maori dogs may in pre-Euro- 
pean times have hunted wild ground birds. 
Some Maori dogs were trained to hunt. This 
hunting ability of some Maori dogs is men- 
tioned in native traditions and post-European 
descriptions but there are no references to the 
custom by the earliest explorers to give complete 
confidence in these other sources of information 
( Luomala, I960). 
Although J. S. Polack, who travelled in New 
Zealand between 1831 and 1837, frequently 
mentions the dogs he encountered and classifies 
them, he nowhere specifically describes one or 
more of them. He writes (1838, I: 308) : 
Of quadrupeds, indigenous to the country, there 
are none. The kararahe, or dog (Canis Aus- 
tralis), which, when young, is known as kuri, 
has been an inhabitant some two or three cen- 
turies. A tradition yet exists of his having been 
given to the natives, in times remote, by a num- 
ber of divinities, who had made a descent on 
these shores. 
This sagacious animal has dwindled down to 
the lowest grade of his interesting family, which 
may be easily accounted for from the stinted 
allowance that has come to his share for many 
generations. 
He also writes {op. cit., p. 310), "The former 
name of a dog in the country was pero, which 
in some measure substantiates the supposition 
of Juan Fernandez having visited the country, 
pero signifying a dog in the Spanish language.” 
Polack discursively alternates between eulo- 
gies of the devotion of New Zealand dogs to 
their owners and denunciations of them as mon- 
grels and "curs of the lowest degree in the scale 
of animal creation” and "the greatest pest in 
the country” (1836, I: 66, 74, 135, 141, 155, 
156, 230, 308-314, 389, 400; II: 254). The be- 
havior of the barking, pugnacious, and sheep- 
killing dogs that Polack saw suggests that few 
if any were of the pre-European native varieties 
or unmixed with European breeds. 
Ernest Dieffenbach (1843, II: 184), also fa- 
miliar with New Zealand of the early nineteenth 
century, quotes Polack and adds further observa- 
tions: 
The dog of the natives is not the Australian 
dingo, but a much smaller variety, resembling 
the jackal, and of a dirty yellowish colour. It is 
now rarely met with, as almost the whole race 
of the island has become a mongrel breed. A 
native dog of New Zealand is not a sufficiently 
powerful animal to do harm to domestic sheep, 
but it is different with the introduced and mon- 
grel dogs, mostly bull-terriers or bloodhounds, 
which are savage pig-dogs although with men 
they are great cowards. In want of better sport 
they hunt young birds, and to this cause the 
scarcity of many indigenous birds must be 
ascribed. The natives also call the dog some- 
times 'Pero’ (Spanish): they have a tradition 
that their ancestors brought the dog with them 
when they first peopled New Zealand. Is it not 
probable, from the Spanish name, that the dog 
was brought to them by navigators of that na- 
tion before the time of Tasman? 
Tasman, it will be recalled, reported the dis- 
covery of New Zealand in 1642 though he did 
not land. 
Dieffenbach (II: 45-47; I: 417) repeats this 
information with slight variations and additions. 
The color of the dog is "reddish brown,” the 
ears are "long and straight.” The animal "rather 
resembles” the jackal whereas the dingo is like 
the wolf in size and shape. 
John Edward Gray (who styled himself 
"F.R.S., British Museum”) contributes a section 
on fauna to Dieffenbach’s book. The part on the 
