180 THE SOUTHEKN DHOLE. 



ranging from Sumatra and Malacca to Thibet, and have been quite 

 unable to detect what appears to us to be a valid specific distinction. 

 There are, indeed, great differences between different specimens, but 

 intermediate conditions connect together the most divergent forms. 

 The colour, however, is always more or less red, except in specimens 

 which come from the lofty region of Thibet. These latter have a long 

 soft furry coat of a pale colour, while specimens from hot regions have 

 a close and rather harsh coat. 



It is not so surprising that this species should vary greatly, seeing 

 that it ranges over so enormous a space namely, not only over all 

 Hindostan and Eastern Thibet, but also over the Malay Peninsula and 

 its Archipelago as far as Borneo. 



The animal is generally, when fully grown, larger than the Jackal, 

 though it varies in size as well as in colour; it has a moderately 

 long tail, which may or may not be bushy. It is an inhabitant of the 

 forests, though not exclusively so. Diurnal, for the most part, and 

 gregarious in its habits, it hunts in packs of from six to twenty in number. 

 Mr. Blanford informs us that in India they live principally upon wild 

 pigs and various kinds of deer, many sambar and spotted deer, Indian 

 antelopes, and even the nilgai being occasionally killed and devoured 

 by them. In Thibet they feed on wild sheep. They will sometimes 

 attack the Himalayan black bear*, and Elliot has known a tiger leaving 

 a jungle to have been killed by a pack of these creatures. There 

 is also more evidence to the same effect, though such accounts are no 

 doubt sometimes mistaken or exaggerated. According to Blanford they 

 avoid the neighbourhood of man, and, in consequence, rarely attack 

 domestic animals, though they occasionally pull down a tame buffalo. 

 One instance of this has been observed both by Jerdon and McM'aster, 

 and Blanford came across a third case in the jungles east of Baroda : 

 " I was curious," he tells us, " to see how so large an animal had 

 been destroyed. There were but a few tooth-marks about the nose 

 and throat, and some of the pack had evidently attacked the buffalo 

 in front, whilst others tore it open. This is probably their usual way 



* See Captain Baldwin's ' Large and Small Game of Bengal,' p. 19. 



