20 THE DOG IN HEALTH. 



The wild African dogs (Ekia or Deab) are unclaimed, 

 half-wild, despised animals, living on the refuse of the 

 village streets or on wild animals they hunt on their own 

 account. They are rather large, resemble the wolf, and 

 are very fierce, illustrating well how usage affects the dog 

 for evil as well as for good. 



"Wild American dogs are now somewhat scarce, but at 

 one period were no doubt numerous enough. 



The characteristics and mode of life of these varieties 

 of the canine race throw much light on not a few points 

 that are peculiar to the dog as we know him in civiliza- 

 tion, and lend strong probability to the views as to the 

 origin of this animal set forth in these pages. 



In almost every neighborhood there are dogs that are 

 relatively wild, and many a one, left behind to shift for 

 himself when the family to which he belonged has moved 

 away, has in the struggle for existence become a midnight 

 marauder or a canine vagabond possibly a dangerous one. 

 The author has known of dogs that committed depreda- 

 tions on flocks of fowls of the neighborhoods in which 

 they prowled about that were long attributed to foxes, till 

 at last these vagrant animals were discovered in the act. 



He has also known several dogs in the outskirts of a 

 large city in this country take up their temporary abode 

 in vacant lots or open fields, where a little straw or similar 

 bedding might be found, associate with them other dogs 

 that soon learned to be of habits more or less like their 

 own, constituting a sort of pack that lived by visiting the 

 barrels set out for the scavengers, such animals being a 

 menace both to human beings and well-behaved dogs that 

 avoided such company. This state of things has brought 



