C'ANIS PALLIPKS. 



141 



devoured by wolves in one pergunnah alone. Sometimes a large wolf is 

 seen to seek his prey singly. These are called Won-tola by the Canarese, 

 and reckoned particularly fierce." 



I have found wolves most abundant in the Deccan and in Central India. 

 I have often chased them for several miles, they keeping 50 to 100 yards 

 ahead of the horse, and the only kind of ground on which a horse appeared 

 to gain on them was heavy ploughed land. I have known wolves turn on • 

 dogs that were running at their heels and pursue them smartly till close 

 up to my horse. A wolf once joined with my greyhounds in pursuit of 

 a fox, which was luckily killed almost immediately afterwards, or the wolf 

 might have seized one of the dogs instead of the fox. He sat down on 

 his haunches about 60 yards oif whUst the dogs were worrying the fox, 

 looking on with great apparent interest, and was with difficulty driven 

 away. In many parts of the North-west of India, they are very destruc- 

 tive to children, as about Agra, in Oude, Eohilcund and Kajpootana, and 

 rewards are given by Government for their destruction. Wolves breed 

 in holes in the ground, or caves, having only three or four young, it 

 is said. "The female has ten teats. They are usually rather silent, but 

 sometimes bark just like a pariah dog. The howling after their prey, 

 recorded of the European wolf, is seldom heard in India. 



Hodgson has described a wolf from Tibet, Canis laniger, sometimes 

 called the "white wolf" by sportsmen who cross the Himalayas. It is the 

 Chag^u of Tibet, Chanhodi near the Mti pass from Kumaon ; and it is a 

 larger animal than the Indian wolf, with white face and limbs, and no 

 dark tip to the tail, which is fully brushed. The fur is extremely woolly, 

 and the hairy piles few ; but this is also to a certain extent apparent in 

 domestic dogs of the same region. 



Another species of wolf has recently been described by Gray,* as Canis 

 chanco, or the red wolf of Tibet, or golden wolf: " fulvous, head grayish- 

 brown, lower parts pure white. Somewhat larger than the European 

 wolf, to which its skull bears a close resemblance." It is probably the 

 same as the animal in Blyth's Cat. Mamm. No. 119, " large red wolf," 

 referred by that naturalist with doubt to Pallas' G. alpinus ; but Gray says 

 that that is a fox. The specific name given by Gray is the name also 

 applied to the common wolf of that region, spelt differently. 



There are many other species of wolves in various parts of the northern 

 regions of both continents. 



• Proceeaingfl Zoological Society, 1863, p. 94. 



