58 ANIMALS AT WORK AND PL A P 



advance in the scale of animal well-being by its 

 inherited instinct of combination. Its courage, which 

 is not exaggerated by any of the traditions current, 

 is probably as much due to the survival of the 

 fittest in their combined hunting, as the endurance 

 of a foxhound to a century of careful selection by 

 owners of packs. It was this disciplined, hound-like 

 habit, and a certain fearless confidence shown by the 

 red-dogs on the rare occasions on which they were 

 encountered by Europeans that suggested the idea 

 that they must be the ' original dog/ Indian 

 naturalists, struck by their unlikeness to the sneak- 

 ing wolves, jackals, and foxes, classed them as the 

 natural ' hound,' and distinguished the race by the 

 honourable title of ' /eiW,' the word ' canis ' being 

 appropriated to the less noble wolves and their 

 allies. There is a slight, though real, difference 

 in the structure of the Asiatic hunting dogs, which 

 have only forty-two teeth, in place of the forty-four 

 of the dogs ; but the habits of the wild dogs are so 

 distinct in character from the wild ancestors of the 

 domestic breeds, that, though Professor Huxley pro- 

 nounced, from the evidence of structure only, that 

 they were ' nothing but a large and slightly modi- 

 fied form of the jackal type, which seems to have 

 become specialised in the Eastern extremity of its 

 area of distribution,' the impression of the earlier 



