ON THE AFRICAN HUNTING DOG. 403 
26. The Coloration of the African Hunting Dog (Lycaon 
pictus). By Major J. Stevenson-Hamivton, C.M.Z.S. 
[Received March 17, 1914; Read April 21, 1914. ] 
INDEX. 
Variation and Atiology. 
The classification into several subspecies of the Hunting Dogs 
of South Africa has been apparently based upon the supposed 
fact that animals inhabiting certain regions of the sub-continent 
display colour-patterns clearly distinguishing them from their 
relatives in other such regions, and so justify their division 
into different sub-races. 
My own acquaintance with the Hunting Dogs of other parts 
of South Africa is purely cursory; but of those inhabiting the 
Transvaal, especially the north-eastern portions, I have a fairly 
intimate knowledge. J should remark here that, while, as I shall 
endeavour to show, some of the distinctions of pattern and colour 
brought forward as evidence of distinctive race are merely 
individual peculiarities, there seems no doubt that the animals 
native to the deserts of the south-west of the Union of South 
Africa tend to be very much lighter in general colour than those 
inhabiting the forests and savannas of the north and east. 
I do not know to what type or types the Hunting Dogs of the 
Transvaal Province would be assigned, but the natural features 
dividing the western from the eastern portions of the Province are 
very much more formidable than those which separate, on the one 
hand, the eastern Transvaal from Rhodesia on the north and from 
Zululand on the south, and, on the other, the western Transvaal 
from Bechuanaland and Cape Colony respectively. Seeing, then, 
that the Hunting Dogs of Zululand, which certainly rub shoulders 
with the animals from the eastern Transvaal on the common ground 
of Swaziland, have acquired the dignity of a separate subspecies, it 
might reasonably be expected that the animals from the eastern 
and western Transvaal and bush countries, separated as they are 
from one another by several hundred miles of plateau country, 
which is civilized and practically devoid of all wild game for many 
years past, would be still more mutually distinct. 
It is the case, however, that in the eastern Transvaal there are 
found, in the same locality and even within the same pack, colour- 
patterns which would fit, not only any of the determined sub- 
-species, but, if produced singly for classification on the same 
grounds, no doubt seemingly would justify the establishment, of 
a good many more. 
Proc. Zoou. Soc.—1914, No. XX VII. 27 
