THE JACKALS. 207 
and for the same reason we apply it to the present 
form of minor gregarious canines.* By separating 
our group of Thous from the true Jackals, much 
confusion in the discrepancies of size, manners, 
and colours, is removed; and as the former are 
unquestionably the ancient occupants to whom the 
oldest authors refer, we find that there is no distinct 
proof of the Jackal or Chakal being abundant in 
Asia Minor during the earlier classical ages: there 
is not even sufficient to show the existence of the 
species in Western Asia before the Macedonian 
invasion of Persia. At the present time it is, ac- 
cording to Ruppel, still a stranger to Egypt; and 
had a creature so notoriously unpleasant been com- 
mon, some one of the very numerous writers of 
those regions would have noticed it in a manner 
not to be mistaken. It may be, that one of the 
smaller Thoes of Aristotle is the true Jackal; and 
he may have first obtained a knowledge of the 
animal by means of his correspondence in Alex- 
anders army. Pliny mixed it up with his Thoes ; 
and in the Scriptures, if noticed at all, the animal 
is not distinguishable from other canines. Had it 
been common, the epithets of warner or howler, 
the two most striking characteristics of the group, 
could have hardly escaped forming similies in the 
picturesque and magnificent denunciations of the 
* Gesner contends that Papio was the classical name of the 
Jackal: this word may be of barbarous origin, and it is also 
clear that the ancients understood a four-handed animal by it ; 
probably an ape or a baboon. 
