WILD DOGS. 129 



They would never molest men ; but would " go " for any or every animal. 

 In consequence they had always to be kept on the chain. When they broke 

 loose — which not infrequently happened— they did not attempt to escape, but 

 always kept about the house. They all met with untimely deaths. One died 

 when still a pup, from confinement in a basket — they appear to require plenty 

 of fresh air — another while en route to a railway sj}ation, and the remaining 

 four from diarrhoea engendered by a cannibal propensity thay had of killing 

 and eating any stray dog they could get hold of. 



My observation of these dogs has convinced me that for gameness, staunch- 

 ness, and invincible tenacity we have no breed of domestic dog to compare 

 with the wild one. Sportsmen scoff at the native belief that wild dogs drive 

 away and even kill tigers. I was a derisive sceptic in reference to this belief 

 myself once ; but of late years events have come under my notice which 

 incline me to think that the natives may be right after all. Prima facie it 

 does appear preposterous to allege that a mighty muscular animal like a 

 tiger, the merest pat of whose paw is sufficient to crush the life out of the wild 

 dog, is liable to fall a victim to so comparatively puny an assailant even when 

 indefinitely multiplied ; but the secret of the success of the wild dogs may 

 lie in the lightning-like celerity with which they attack, combined with the 

 marvellous tenacity of their hold, and their invincible resolution never to be 

 shaken off once they seize, Reis Jciikul ! (wild dogs) said a Cliencliu succinctly 

 to me one day, as we surveyed the carcase of a fine stag sambar in the depths 

 of a forest in the Nullamallais. These laconic words explained every- 

 thing — the torn ears and gorged eyes of the sambar ; the splashes of blood 

 we saw on the hill-sides for some miles ; and the disturbed state of the 

 ground and undergrowth at intervals of every furlong or so, where the 

 stag had repeatedly fallen to the earth in his headlong flight, borne 

 down under the weight of his relentless enemies, clinging to his ears 

 and eyes with an invincible tenacity that no effort of the hunted beast 

 could overcome. It was difficult to realise that the great, powerful, fleet 

 beast lying dead before us, with his enormous and formidable antlers, 

 had been vanquished both in speed and strength by so small an anta- 

 gonist as a wild dog. As if to show us how it was done, our meditations 

 were interrupted by piercing woman-like screams, and a splendid stag rushed 

 distractedly past us with a wild dog clinging to his back ; the sambar 

 was screaming piteously, and vainly trying to dislodge the dog by backward 

 sweeps of his antlers, while in the rear laboured three other wild dogs. 

 This order they maintained until the descent of the hill, when the stag made 

 a false step, and rolled over and over with a force apparently sufficient to 

 smash the wild dog to a jelly, but which had not the slightest effect on the 

 beast inasmuch as it did not relinquish its hold ! As the stag regained his 

 feet the foremost of the three pursuing wild dogs sprang for its head and 

 was swept aside by a vigorous stroke of the stag's antlers; but at the same 

 moment, ere the stag could lower his head again, the other two doga seized 

 17 



