168 THE RED DOGS. 



great personal courage, and the instinct of defend- 

 ing each other in danger. Their voice is a kind of 

 barking ; they hunt both by day and by night ; and 

 though fearing the presence of man, they have the 

 courage to attack the largest animals, the antelope, 

 the wild boar, the buffalo, not excepting the tiger 

 and lion. Bearing an inherent hostility to the larger 

 felinae, they are incessantly on the watch to destroy 

 the whelps, and the concert and energy they display 

 in encountering the adults, is believed to be the 

 chief cause, which all Indian sportsmen admit, of 

 the alarm of the tiger at the sight even of a domestic 

 spaniel ; indeed, the dread cannot have been caused 

 by the sportsmau's domesticated spaniels or pointers, 

 but must lie deeper in the natural instincts of beasts 

 of the forest ; and we may surmise, that the species 

 of Chryseus are the instruments Nature has ap- 

 pointed to keep down the superabundant increase 

 of the great felinae of the wilderness. The manners 

 and instinctive faculties of these animals remove 

 them alike from wolves and from jackals. No natu- 

 ralist adverts to the offensive odour so commonly 

 remarked in wolves, jackals, and foxes, as belonging 

 to them ; whence, we may conclude, that they ap- 

 proximate dogs also in the smaller volume of the 

 anal glands; and as there appears to be a proba- 

 bility that a species of this group formerly resided 

 in Europe, to their nightly hunting, perhaps more 

 than to the wolf, may be ascribed the origin of the 

 mysterious stories of romance, first found in the 

 Ostrogoth sagas, concerning the wild hunter of Ger- 



