THE RED DJG3. 177 



All these characters are perfectly applicable to the 

 Chryseus of our type, and to its varieties. The 

 mistaking Oppian commenced with Belon, and 

 Kaempfer, being unacquainted with the existence 

 of the rufous wild dog, referred aureus to the jackal 

 and misled Linnaeus. 



It is even more likely that from this group the 

 mixture with a domestic race might be reported to 

 have been obtained, which the ancients, and even 

 Aristotle, repeatedly assert to be the Alopecides or 

 the Chaonian and Spartan breeds, but which, from 

 their strength and courage, could never have re- 

 sulted from crossing dogs with foxes.* 



There is some reason to presume that the Chry- 

 seus formerly existed in Southern Europe; for to 

 what other species can we refer the kind of wild 

 dogs noticed by Scaliger as existing in the woods of 

 Montefalcone in Italy ? " There resided," he says, 

 " for ages, about Montefalcone, a species of wild 

 dogs; animals dijffering from wolves in manners, 

 voice, and colours; never mixing with them, and 

 being particularly fond of human flesh." This last 

 character may have been a gratuitous addition of 

 bis informers ; he does not in this paragraph notice 

 the particular colour, but in another part of the 

 work, wild dogs of a rubiginous colour are inci 



* Isocrates and Xenophon represent the Laconian dogs to 

 be amongst the most powerful, and Aurelius Nemesianus : — 



Elige 

 Non humuli de gente canem, sed cruribus altis, 

 Sen Laoedeiuonio natam seu rare raolosso. 



