ANIMAL COURAGE 57 



is abundant evidence to prove that, from the animals' 

 point of view, Mr Rudyard Kipling is right. The 

 story has this additional attraction, that of all the 

 commoner animals of Asia, none is so little known 

 and is the subject of so little detailed information as 

 the wild dog, though none has left a stronger im- 

 pression on the fancy and fears of the natives. It 

 has been extinct in Europe for centuries. Yet alone, 

 of all vanished creatures, it still survives in legend, 

 and there is no wild district of the forests of Central 

 and Northern Europe where tales of the ghostly pack 

 of wild hounds, intent and unremitting in the chase, 

 are not part of the tradition of the woodman's hut.* 

 The place of the wild dogs in the imagination 

 of the jungle dwellers may be gathered from Mr 

 Kipling's story. But they have always had a 

 curious fascination for naturalists, and this attraction 

 is largely due to the habits and mental qualities of 

 the creatures themselves. They are the only fierce 

 carnivorous animals which always live in society. 

 Even wolves hunt in packs largely by accident, or 

 for convenience, or when driven to associate in 

 severe weather. But the wild dog is by choice and 

 habit a social animal, and one which, unlike any 

 other race except the baboons, has made a real 



* The story of the ' Gabriel Hounds ' current on Dartmoor and on the York- 

 shire Wold, seems an indication that the wild dogs once existed in England. 



