DINGO SEEN BY DAMPIER 197 



carnivorous animals. The thylacine and the Tasmanian 

 devil far exceed in greed of prey and ferocity of disposi- 

 tion anything I have read of the lion and the tiger ; but 

 not being strictly continental animals, though both were 

 formerly abundant on the mainland, they cannot be 

 described here. The wild dog of Australia, the dingo, how- 

 ever, is another matter, and to write an account of Australia 

 and not describe the dingo, would be like eschewing 

 mention of the lion in a work on Africa. Yet the dingo is 

 thoroughly well known to naturalists, and even to persons 

 who do not claim to have a scientific knowledge of the 

 world's fauna. Therefore I will not give a complete 

 history of the animal, but simply describe it from the point 

 of my personal experience of it. 



The first actual mention of the Australian dog is by 

 Dampier, who saw a native accompanied by one when he 

 visited the western side of the continent. Thus we have 

 evidence that the animal was seen by one of the earliest 

 navigators of Australian seas. I have found the bones of 

 dingoes under sixty feet of alluvial deposit, and those of 

 the same or a closely allied species in early tertiary strata. 

 The dingo is, therefore, an old established inhabitant of the 

 continent ; but I do not think that it is indigenous. The 

 dingo {Canis dingo), the Malay dog {Canis ruiilans), and 

 the Indian dog {C. deccanensis) are, in the view of many 

 naturalists, myself included, mere varieties of a single 

 species. They all agree, generally, in size, habits, and 

 coloration. The dingo varies more perhaps in colour 

 than the other two ; but the usual, and therefore the 

 natural, colour of all three is a dingy red, with a shade of 

 yellow on the hair of the flanks. The dingo is often of a 

 dingy yellowish colour, and there are nearly always black 

 points, as on the face, legs, etc., about the animal, and 

 many black hairs are scattered about the coat, particularly 

 on the back. The tip of the tail is usually white. Black 

 specimens of the dingo are sometimes met with, but this is 

 purely accidental. 



The dingo rarely exceeds thirty-two inches in length 

 from the nose to the root of the tail, which is fourteen or 



