ANIMAL COURAGE 59 



naturalists survives the tendency to simplify classi- 

 fication. 



One species of the hunting dog is found north 

 of the Central Asian plateau, in the Siberian 

 forests. It is thickly furred, with a mane, and 

 rough coat like a collie ; but its habits are, so 

 far as can be gathered, identical with those of the 

 'dhole/ It hunts in packs, and one curious fact 

 has been preserved among the doubtful tales of 

 Siberian hunters. It ' clears out ' the whole neigh- 

 bourhood in which the pack has settled. In 1859, 

 all the deer were driven from the valley of the 

 Irkut by these dogs, which hunted under the leader- 

 ship of old male hounds, as they have been observed 

 to do in India. The ' woolly-coated ' wild dog does 

 not cross the Central Asian Plateau. But the rough- 

 haired, bushy -tailed Indian species holds its own, 

 from the barren uplands of Eastern Thibet to the 

 Malay Peninsula. It can live everywhere, though 

 it seems common nowhere. The packs are found 

 hunting wild sheep and ibexes on the uplands of 

 Eastern Thibet, killing sambur and spotted deer in 

 the Himalayas from Cashmere to Assam (its puppies 

 have been taken close to Simla), and it haunts all 

 the large forests of India, the Annamully Hills, the 

 Ghats, and the uplands of the Deccan, those 'grassy- 

 downs ' where Mowgli had ' often watched the fear 



