1 84 THE FOX 



other is the story of the jackal brought up by the 

 tigress with her cubs, which shows his mean origin 

 by running away in cowardly fashion when his foster- 

 brothers attack an elephant. 



There is also a kind of fable in proverb which 

 comes from the East, and describes the jackal as 

 being the lion's provider. I think that when the 

 larger animals are on the prowl the jackals haunt 

 their footsteps in hopes of picking up some share of 

 the prey.' It is even possible that they may be 

 sometimes, in a sense, the lion's or tiger's provider. 

 Suppose a pack of jackals to have pulled down an 

 antelope, or killed a wandering sheep ; if the tiger or 

 leopard, to whom the cries of the jackal pack prob- 

 ably tell what is going on, appear, the jackals would 

 perforce retire at once and give up their quarry. In 

 such cases the jackals sometimes linger so close as 

 to be killed by the tiger. The dead bodies of jackals 

 are not seldom found near the kills of the tiger, so 

 that the jackals are sometimes involuntarily the 

 provider of the feast for their betters. It was some 

 incident of this kind, some rapid generalisation of 

 a rustic wit, that provided us with that kind of natu- 

 ral history which, like the stories of Bishop Pont- 

 oppidan related above, is also fable. But when the 

 larger carnivorous animals are hunting, the jackal 



