ABORIGINAL DOGS. 
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small animal kept as a familiar pet by the Indian 
women.* It had yet so much aptitude for out-of- 
door purposes, as occasionally to return to a state 
of independence. The Goschis of Charlevoix, and 
the Gasques of Garcilasso and Peres, described as 
small dogs absolutely mute, with downy or silky hair 
of different and often of bright colours, possessed by 
the natives of St. Domingo, and the neighbouring 
islands, and used in the chase of their almost only 
quadruped the Agouti, before the arrival of the 
Spaniards, was a dog of the Alco race. The specimen 
which Mr. Bullock brought from Mexico and ex- 
hibited with his collection of Mexican curiosities at 
the Egyptian Hall, he described as an animal of the 
wild breed. Colonel Hamilton Smith represents it 
as having the appearance of a Newfoundland Puppy. i- 
‘ It was small, with rather a large head ; elongated 
occiput ; full muzzle ; pendulous ears ; having long 
soft hair on the body. In colour, it was entirely 
white, excepting a large black spot covering each ear, 
and part of the forehead and cheek, with a fulvous 
mark above each eye, and another black spot on the 
rump ; the tail was rather long, well fringed, and 
white.’ The island breed of this Dog is extinct. We 
* Bryan Edwards, in his History of the West Indies (vol. i. p. 11 6 .), 
when speaking of the Alco, quotes an author named Acosto, who says 
that “ the dogs among the Indians of St. Domingo were a small mute 
creature, with a nose like that of a fox, which the natives called Alco. 
The Indians were so fond of these little animals that they carried them 
on their shoulders wherever they went, and nourished them in their 
bosoms.” 
f Naturalist’s Library, Mammalia, vol. x. Dogs. 
