NOTES ON WILD DOGS, &c. 603 



her lost pups to her, and as I thought how the samhur, once numer- 

 ous, had all been killed oft or driven from the hills by these same red 

 dogs, I checked all sentimental emotions in a transport of scientific 

 zeal, and five minutes later had ascertained her weight to be 30 lbs., 

 her length 34- inches from nose to root of tail; her tail with hair 

 17 inches, and 15 inches to end of vertebrae ; her height 20 inches 

 at the shoulder ; her irides brown, and pupils large and round. 

 The terminal portion of the brush was black, with a few white 

 hairs at the very tip. Mr. Blanford quotes Hodgson as saying that 

 the tail of a specimen he had was ]4|^ inches, including the hair, 

 and 8 inches without the hair. These figures seem doubtful. The 

 general colour was rufous, paler underneath. The hair was 

 considerably redder and coarser and somewhat longer than 

 is that of the ordinary village pariah-dog; the muzzle blackish; 

 ears, large, thick, and rounded like those of a hysena. I had been 

 feeding this pup on milk and water, which she seemed to think poorly 

 of as an article of diet ; and as the mother-dog (if she was the 

 mother and not merely a sympathetic passer-by) did not seem to 

 have such a supply of the milk of canine kindness as would suffice 

 for three hungry puppies, I concluded that they had begun to 

 be weaned, and accordingly changed the diet to soup and meat. 

 One was too far gone to feed, but the other snatched at the 

 bits of meat with a ravenous fury that reminded me of the way 

 in which a pike or a young crocodile dashes blindly at a bait as it 

 passes him. The irides of this pup were not brown, but blue-gray 

 at first, as one notices is the case with the irides of brown- eyed pups 

 generally. In about a fortnight they had become brown. This dog 

 seemed to be guided to her food by smell rather than by sight at 

 first, and even now she does not always seem to see near objects 

 clearly, but noses about on the ground for small bits of meat thrown 

 to her. She dashes at a plate full of scraps of meat, and tries to bolt 

 bit after bit as fast as she can snatch them, nearly choking herself 

 at times, and she often seizes the plate and drags it away to the end 

 of her chain, upsetting the contents. She does this oftenest with 

 milk. She rarely touches water, but laps, rather gobbles up, milk 

 eagerly. My little spaniel Paddy often tried to play and frisk with 

 her, and she used to put her head up to his nose and seemed to be 



