Art. XVIII.—Note on the Ancient Maori Dog. By Captain F. W. Hutton, Curator of the Canterbury Museum. [Read before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 5th May, 1897.] Plate XV. Although several papers have appeared in the “Transactions of the New Zealand Institute” on the ancient dog of the Maoris,* Sir James Hector, in vol. ix., p. 243; the Rev. W. Colenso, in vols. x., p. 135, and xxv., p. 495; Mr. Taylor White, in vols. xxii., p. 327, xxiv., p. 540, and xxvi. p. 585. no one as yet has given measurements of specimens the age of which is undoubted, so that they can be compared with the measurements of other dogs. Messrs. Windle and Humphreys give the comparative measurements, taking the basieranial axis at 100, of a dog's skull from New Zealand, now in the Oxford Museum, which they presume to have belonged to the dog of the Maoris, and they also quote Fitzinger as saying that the similarity of characteristics between the Maori dog and the Great Pariah is so marked as to leave no doubt that the former is a climatic modification of the latter;† Pro. Zool. Society of London, 1890, p. 22. but no actual measurements are given. I have therefore thought that it would be useful to place on record the measurements of some bones of dogs in the Canterbury Museum from the old Maori kitchen-middens, the great age of which cannot be doubted, all those from the South Island having been found associated with moa-bones. The measurements given are in millimetres, and have been made according to the plan of Professor Huxley in his paper “On the Cranial and Dental Characters of the Canidœ.”‡ Pro. Zool. Society of London, 1880, p. 243. As mandibles are more common than crania, they naturally show a wider variation in size, and I estimate that the largest mandible in the collection belonged to a skull with a total length of about 190 mm., while the smallest indicates a skull of about 130 mm. in length. In the lower jaw, numbered C, the third molar is suppressed, but in all the others it is, or has been, present. For the sake of comparison I have also given the measurements of the skull of a dingo which is in the Museum:—