COUSIN JACK 189 



gallop we had with this little pack, and they taught 

 me something about hunting and something also 

 about the habits of the jackals. 



One evening I had run a jackal into some reed-beds 

 near a river. The short Indian twilight was closing 

 in, and I was sitting in an open space collecting my 

 little pack, when I caught a gleam of light, and saw 

 that all about me were many eyes. A ring of silent 

 jackals was seated all round the pack. It was a most 

 eerie sight, and reminded me of the stories I had 

 heard of jackals setting on greyhounds in order to 

 rescue a comrade in difficulties. But this incident 

 also gave me an insight into the ways of the jackal. 

 In the morning we generally found the jackals going 

 home one by one, and I came to the conclusion that 

 the creature is solitary by day, but gregarious at night, 

 and that I had probably hit on the trysting-place of a 

 clan of jackals. 



I think it is likely that as the foxes hunt more 

 or less in families in their early days, so the jackals, 

 never having been as much hunted as the foxes, 

 retain the habit of hunting together in families or 

 clans. There is a faint trace of this clan feeling in 

 the way that hounds of the same family are found to 

 hunt together. Every huntsman will tell us that a 

 father and son, or a mother and daughter, may often 



