90 INTRODUCTION. 



the first division of his arrangement, where he refers 

 to the wolf; and thus far left the argument of 

 identity and filiation untouched.* 



All we as yet know of the Dhole or Quihoe 

 would lead us to a contrary conclusion. t The Dingo 

 is indeed better known : his conformation in general, 

 and the fact of his being in a country of marsupial 

 animals, as yet almost the only true mamiferous 

 animal found in a state of nature, ofi'ers a fairer 

 field for presuming his identity with domestic dogs ; 

 but the failure of mixino- his race with the Euro- 



o 



* In the plate of heads of dogs m Mr Griffith's Animal 

 Kingdom, representing wild varieties of the dog taken from 

 Colonel Hamilton Smith's drawings, the engraver has erro- 

 neously marked the numbers. Head, No. 1, is that of the 

 Dhole ; 2, of the South American wolf or dog ; 3, of the 

 Dingo ; and 4, of a specimen formerly in the possession of 

 Mr G. Astor of New York, which he denominated, and by 

 comparison with numerous skins, proved to be of the wolf of 

 the Falkland Islands. 



f If Mr Bell, in referring to the Dhole of Asia, had in 

 view the observations of Mr Frederick Cuvier (in the Dic- 

 tionnaire des Sciences Naturelles, at the word Chien), it will 

 appear that, on this occasion, that learned and attentive 

 observer quoted from Captain Williamson's Oriental Field 

 Sports, probably without referring to the text ; for he cites 

 the plate where some Pariah dogs have driven a panther into 

 a mango tree, and not that where Dholes attack a tiger. On 

 consulting Captain Williamson's text, he speaks of the Dhole 

 as a wild dog, but he does not say that this animal is de- 

 scended from a domestic breed. The context would lead to 

 a different conclusion. As for the plate, it was Colonel 

 Hamilton Smith who made the sketch of the Dholes, not 

 very correctly reproduced in tlie plate. 



