THE RED DOGS. 177 
All these characters are perfectly applicable to the 
Chryseus of our type, and to its varieties. The 
mistaking Oppian commenced with Belon, and 
Kaempfer, being unacquainted with the existence 
of the rufous wild dog, referred aureus to the jackal 
and misled Linnzus. 
It is even more likely that from this group the 
mixture with a domestic race might be reported to 
have been obtained, which the ancients, and even 
Aristotle, repeatedly assert to be the Alopecides or 
the Chaonian and Spartan breeds, but which, from 
their strength and courage, could never have re- 
sulted from crossing dogs with foxes.* 
There is some reason to presume that the Chry- 
seus formerly existed in Southern Europe; for to 
what other species can we refer the kind of wild 
dogs noticed by Ncaliger as existing in the woods of 
Montefalcone in Italy? ‘“ There resided,” he says, 
“‘ for ages, about Montefalcone, a species of wild 
dogs; animals differing from wolves in manners, 
voice, and colours; never mixing with them, and 
being particularly fond of human flesh.” This last 
character may have been a gratuitous addition of 
his informers ; he does not in this paragraph notice 
the particular colour, but in another part of the 
work, wild dogs of a rubiginous colour are inci- 
* Tsocrates and Xenophon represent the Laconian dogs to 
be amongst the most powerful, and Aurelius Nemesianus :— 
Elige 
Non humuli de gente canem, sed cruribus altis, 
Seu Lacedemonio natam seu rure molosso. 
VOL. I. M 
