500 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 1892. 



contrary is characteristic of domestication. " The wild dogs/' 

 Forsyth continues, *^live in packs of fifteen or twenty, and prey 

 exclusively on game, running down all sorts of deer like a pack of 

 hounds. Where a pack has been hunting for any time, most of the 

 game naturally disappears. This applies to the tiger even, which 

 they are said to attack whenever they meet him. Tigers would 

 naturally follow the herds of deer on which they prey, if they 

 were moved by the wild dogs ; bat there is such a consensus of 

 native opinion as to the pack actually hunting, and even sometimes 

 killing, tigers, that it is dijSicult altogether to discredit it. I do not 

 believe [Forsyth continues] that any number of the dogs could 

 overcome a tiger in fair fight ; but I think it quite possible that they 

 might stick to him, and wear him out by keeping him from his 

 natural food. Many stories are related of tigers climbiug into trees 

 (which, of course, is quite against their nature) to escape from them ; 

 and I once saw the bones of a tiger lying on a ledge of rock, where 

 more than one person assured me that they had seen him lying sur- 

 rounded by a large pack of the wild dogs." 



" Fair fight," as Forsyth calls it, is not the system of attack 

 pursued by these dogs ; they keep out of reach and make snatches at 

 the tiger, lacerating the hinder parts in a terribly effective manner. 



Major Ward, in his Sportsman's Guide to Kaslimw (p. 88), says 

 that the Ram him or wild dog is tolerably common in Tilail, north- 

 east of the vale of Kashmir. He shot two out of a pack, and notes 

 that one was five feet long from the nose to end of tail. He also notes 

 that game leave a district infested by these dogs, but he does not 

 credit the stories of their killing tigers, though he believes that the 

 tigers leave the jungles as the game has been driven away by the dogs. 

 He mentions that a pair of these dogs took up their quarters near a 

 Kashmiri village, and often worried the sheep in the open country. 

 Jerdon {Mavimals, p. 145) says that there is *^ a prevalent belief 

 among sportsuaen in India of the existence of two races of wild dogs 

 in India," and he quotes Hamilton Smith, who goes further in 

 stating that '^ besides the Jangli Kuta of the plains, there are two 

 hill kinds, one larger, the other smaller," &c. According to Major 

 Ward, the Kashmiri shikaris also say that there are two species of 

 these wild dogs, the small breed destroying sheep and goats and 



