THE DOG TRIBE. 203 



and the farther they retired, the longer would the dogs be in finding 

 something for their own craving stomachs. When at a great distance 

 from their supposed retreat, what master-dog will take upon himself 

 to organise the pack ? and when the hard day's hunting is over, how 

 will he dispose of his confederates ? Are the females, which remained 

 behind on the hunting morning, in order to take care of their newly- 

 whelped pups, supposed to wait in anxious expectation that some 

 generous hound will return with a neck of goat in his mouth for their 

 support? Certainly, if dogs be gregarious, and hunt for food in 

 packs, the system appears very imperfect, and is somewhat against 

 the order of nature, by which the dog can always find sufficient food 

 in the wilds when he is a solitary individual, but must be sorely 

 pinched at best, and often deprived of the means of obtaining it, 

 when congregated, and scouring the country in large and quarrel- 

 some and famished packs. Civilised man can easily find food and 

 shelter for his packs of hounds, but there is no such provision in 

 the regions where dogs run wild. Accidental food is all that these 

 last can find. Were wild dogs to hunt in packs, the daily supply of 

 food would not be sufficient to satisfy the cravings of every individual ; 

 and to prevent starvation, the pack would soon be obliged to separate, 

 and each dog to hunt for itself. The lion, a carnivorous animal, 

 springs upon his prey from a lonely ambush, and has no competitor. 

 So it is with the tiger ; and so, I have no doubt, it must be with the 

 wild dog because, by stealthy approaches, and in silence, the neigh- 

 bourhood is not alarmed, and herds, which constitute the food of 

 carnivorous animals, would not be driven from their native haunts. 

 But let a pack of hungry dogs make one or two attacks upon the 

 congregated multitudes of herbaceous animals, and then we may 

 rest assured that these last would take the alarm, and would fly for 

 ever from their once peaceful abodes ; so that we may consider it 

 a wise provision in the economy of nature that, on account of food 

 alone, herbaceous animals should be gregarious, and carnivorous 

 ones the solitary inhabitants of countries where Omnipotence has 

 ordered them to range. 



I do not deny but that half a dozen individuals of a canine family 

 occasionally may be observed in the act of scouring along a plain, 

 or traversing a wood in company, for I myself have counted two old 



