MISCELLANEOUS NOTES, 547 



Their affinities with the Southern Bedars and Derails are hardly to be doubted, 

 and their dogs may well be distant cousins of the packs of Mysore and Madras. 

 The Ramusis often sell their dogs. ISTone of these Indian dogs, however grey- 

 hound-like, have had the advantage of Lord Oiford's cross with the bull doc, 

 whence we trace the English Greyhound's weak power of scent and fierce energy. 

 Therefore they all use scent more or less, (as indeed will he, if allowed), and all, 

 to some extent, give tongue upon a scent, though not in anything like the tone 

 of a hound, with one odd exception. This is at a village on the Bhima, whereof 

 I have forgotten the name, but there was a bungalow there, where some early 

 Yictorian Collector of Poona once kept fox-hounds. There, when I last visited 

 the place, two and twenty years ago, the fox-hound cross was still observable in 

 the face and voice of the local " pie." 



All the races named, to the best of my belief, are apt to have the so-called 

 " dew claw," especially the short-haired greyhound-like types, and most espe- 

 cially the " Lut." It is usually removed in pu))pyhood, as exposing the dog to 

 injury in running. I have seen and performed the operation, "cruel only to be 

 kind" — the wound heals in a few hours, because, I su|)pose, the soft tissues of 

 the puppy give way easily. All who have kept Greyhounds, know that injuries to 

 the claws of the adult are often a serious matter, and the dew claw, when retained, 

 seems to be specially liable to these, while functionally useless. 



Of imported dogs, a small European-looking greyhound, usually fawn-coloured- 

 is knoun to me as the Arab Greyhound, and atsller race, with the shajjc of a grey, 

 hound and the coat of a rather smooth black and tan Setter, as the Persian. But 

 I am not aware of any better authority fur these names than that of the horse 

 dealers who sell them. 



In this Presidency, as we go North-west, the village " pie " gets bigger and 

 bigger, more and more " audacious " and aggressive, until in Upper Sind, I have 

 known the " pies " to drive out of his own head-quarter town a newly-arrived 

 Assistant Collector from the Peninsular Provinces, who had dared to walk into it 

 without a stick. He returned, however, inarms and in wrath; and great and 

 grim was the slaughter. On the border, the brutes are still more savage; and 

 beyond it I'm told, nearly as l)ig and quite as dangerous as the men. What's 

 worse, as they are useful watch-dogs, your defence may involve you in feud. But 

 all that I have seen of these d'gs, including the pack of so great a Nimrod as the 

 Amir Ali Murad Khan of Khairpur, were merely highly developed "pies"; 

 evidently near of kin to those of every village iu the Peninsular Provinces of 

 Bombay. 



Thana. W. F. SINCLAIR, I.C.S. 



•No. v.— A GAZELLE'S FOOD. 



The following peculiarity in a Gazelle which we have on hoard may be of 

 interest. It was presented to the ship about two years ago by the Sultan of 



