I may add that the domestic dogs on the coast of Guinea are
fox-like animals, and are dumb.[25] On the east coast of Africa,
between latitude 4° and 6° south, and about ten days’ journey in
the interior, a semi-domestic dog, as the Rev. S. Erhardt informs
me, is kept, which the natives assert is derived from a similar
wild animal. Lichtenstein[26] says that the dogs of the Bosjemans
present a striking resemblance even in colour (excepting the black
stripe down the back) with the _C. mesomelas_ of South Africa. Mr.
E. Layard informs me that he has seen a Caffre dog which closely
resembled an Esquimaux dog. In Australia the Dingo is both
domesticated and wild; though this animal may have been introduced
aboriginally by man, yet it must be considered as almost an endemic
form, for its remains have been found in a similar state of
preservation and associated with extinct mammals, so that its
introduction must have been ancient.[27]
From this resemblance of the half-domesticated dogs in several
countries to the wild species still living there,—from the facility
with which they can often be crossed together,—from even half-tamed
animals being so much valued by savages,—and from the other
circumstances previously remarked on which favour their
domestication, it is highly probable that the domestic dogs of the
world are descended from two well-defined species of wolf (viz. _C.
lupus_ and _C. latrans),_ and from two or three other doubtful
species (namely, the European, Indian, and North African wolves);
from at least one or two South American canine species; from
several races or species of jackal; and perhaps from one or more
extinct species. Although it is possible or even probable that
domesticated dogs, introduced into any country and bred there for
many generations, might acquire some of the characters proper to
the aboriginal Canidæ of the country, we can hardly thus account
for introduced dogs having given rise to two breeds in the same
country, resembling two of its aboriginal species, as in the
above-given cases of Guiana and of North America.[28]
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