12 The Dog Book 



We may therefore hold that these two and the dhole are of the same variety, 

 slightly changed in accordance with the climatic conditions. Dhole is 

 a term very generally applied to dogs of India and the East Indies. One 

 of these also called Quidoe, and known to naturalists as Canis Scylax, is 

 described as much more slender than the Kolsun, with a sharper muzzle 

 and a longer and much less bushy tail. Its habits seemed to have been 

 similar. The Canis Sumatrensis mentioned as having been described by 

 General Hardwicke was a small, fox-like dog with smaller ears and of a 

 reddish colour. Java had a dog as large as a wolf, of a reddish-yellow colour. 

 Then there was the Wah, a central and southern India dhole, with a large, 

 broad, flat head and black muzzle, a ferocious-looking, heavily built dog 

 with a rather short tail, tan-coloured, with white underparts and dark tip to 

 tail. This dog hunted in packs and was said to have a deep, growling bay. 



Colonel C. Hamilton Smith tells of an officer who had traversed the 

 mountains of southeastern Persia, and there saw wild dogs called Beluch, 

 which may be the Beluel, described by another writer. These dogs were 

 of a red colour, shy and ferocious, rather low on the legs and long in the 

 body, with a hairy tail, and powerful-looking dogs. The natives told this 

 officer that to the west there was a larger dog, with so much white that the 

 colour on the back appeared in spots or blotches. 



We also know that those who visited various parts of this continent for 

 the first time, discovered it in fact or followed immediately after the first 

 discoverers, found the inhabitants in possession of dogs and packs of wild 

 dogs, "Chiens des Bois," as Buffon calls them. 



Now, why did not these various wild dogs, or at least some of them, go 

 back to the wolf, if, as some would have it, the wolf was the progenitor 

 of the dog, and that these wild dogs are feral, descendants of animals which, 

 originally wolves, had been domesticated ? The coyote is seemingly the 

 connecting link between the dog and the wolf, but he remains a coyote, with 

 closely-touching kin on either hand, distinct, but so closely related that 

 interbreeding is possible, though the produce is only fertile with the parent 

 stock. 



Leaving the speculative part of dog history, we will now begin with the 

 actual records. In an Egyptian tomb of the Fourth Dynasty, somewhere 

 about 3,500 B. c., we have clear evidence of the existence of the dog as used 

 for hunting. This is the tomb of Amten, and in it were found many excel- 

 lently outlined figures of animals. The dog appears in three scenes attack- 



