NOTES ON WILD DOGS, &c., 



By Prof. H. Littledale, b,a., Baroda College. 



( Bead before the Bombay Natural History Society, 

 July 4:th, 1892.) 



Having lately been looking into tlie accounts of wild dogs given 

 by several writers on sport and natural history^ I have been im- 

 pressed by the comparative scantiness of the information that seems 

 to have accumulated on the subject. 



The fullest and most scientific account of wild dogs in India is to 

 be found in Mr. Blanford\s recent book on the Mammalia of India, 

 and I have compared with his remarks the various references to 

 these animals in Darwin's Animals and Plants under Domestication, 

 Jerdon^s Mammals of India, Sterndale's Natural History ^ Cassell's 

 Natural History, Stoueheuge's Booh of the Dog, Ward's Sportsman's 

 Guide to Kashmir, Forsytes Highlands of Central India, Saunder- 

 son's Thirteen Years among the Wild Beasts of India, Baldwin's 

 Oame of Bengal, Kinloch's Large Game Shooting, and Nicholson's 

 Zoology. 



Mr. Blanford divides the living Indian Oanidce into three genera, 

 Canis, Cyon, and Vulpes. He mentions some fossil remains of 

 extinct species of Canis and Vulfes, and also an extinct genus 

 called Ampliicyon, intermediate between dogs and bears, of which 

 a fossil species has been found in the Siwaliks ; and he points out 

 that the Indian wild dog, although belonging to the Canidm, is less 

 truly canine than are other members of the family, such as the 

 wolf and jackal. 



The genus Cyon {kvhv a dog) has two Indian representatives, 

 Cyon deccanensis, the wild dog of the Himalayas and Peninsular 

 India, and Cyon rutilans, the wild dog of the Malayan region 

 {' rutilans color ' in Pliny means of a ' red or glowing colour,' from 

 rutilo, to make or colour red). The specific differences of these 

 two forms are slight, and have not been very fully examined. 



The essential points of unlikeness between the genus Cyon and the 

 true dog-genus Canis are that Cyon has only two true molars on 

 each side of the lower jaw, instead of three, as in Canis. 



