JACKAL, FOX, AXD WOLF. 433 



prize, returning for the real booty at some more convenient 

 season. 1 



Again, Jesse records the following display of the same 

 instinct by the fox, as having been communicated to him 

 by a friend on whose veracity he could rely : 



Part of this rocky ground was on the side of a very high 

 hill, which was not accessible for a sportsman, and from which 

 both hares and foxes took their way in the evening to the plain 

 bslow. There were two channels or gullies made by the rains, 

 leading from these rocks to the lower ground. Near one of 

 these channels, the sportsman in question, and his attendant, 

 stationed themselves one evening in hopes of being able to 

 shoot some hares. They had not been there long, when they 

 observed a fox coming down the gully, and followed by another. 

 After playing together for a little time, one of the foxes con- 

 cealed himself under a large stone or rock, which was at the 

 bottom of the channel, and the other returned to the rocks. 

 He soon, however, came back, chasing a hare before him. As 

 the hare was passing the stone where the first fox had concealed 

 himself, he tried to seize her by a sudden spring, but missed his 

 aim. The chasing fox then came up, and finding that his ex- 

 pected prey had escaped, through the want of skill in his 

 associate, he fell upon him, and they both fought with so much 

 animosity, that the parties who had been watching their pro- 

 ceedings came up and destroyed them both. 



Similarly, Mr. E. C. Buck records ( Nature,' viii., 303) 

 the following interesting observation made by his friend 

 Mr. Elliot, B.C.S., Secretary to Government, N.W.P.: 



He saw two wolves standing together, and shortly after 

 noticing them was surprised to see one of them lie down in a 

 ditch, and the other walk away over the open plain. He 

 watched the latter, which deliberately went to the far side of a 

 herd of antelopes standing in the plain, and drove them, as a 

 sheep-dog would a flock of sheep, to the very spot where his 

 companion lay in ambush. As the antelopes crossed the dituh, 

 the concealed wolf jumped up as in the former case, seized a 

 doe, and was joined by his colleague. 



Mr. Buck draws attention to another closely similar 

 display of collective instinct of wolves in the same 

 district observed by a * writer of one of the books on 

 Indian sport.' 



1 ^ T at Hist, of Ceylon, p. 35. 



