148 CASID^. 



months confinement they were as wild and shy as at the first hour I got 

 them. Their eyes emitted a strong light in the dark, and their bodies 

 had the peculiar fetid odour of the fox and jackal in all its rankness. 

 They were very silent, never uttering an audible sound save when fed, at 

 which time they would snarl in subdued tone at each other, but never 

 fight* nor did they on any occasion show any signs of c[uarrelsomeness or 

 pugnacity." 



Mr. Elliot has the following remarks on this species : — The " wild dog 

 was not known in the Southern Mahratta country until of late years. It has 

 now become very common. The circumstance of their attacking in a body a 

 and killing the tiger is universally believed by the natives. Instances of 

 their killing the wild boar, and of tigers leaving a jungle in which a pack 

 of wild dogs had taken up their quarters, have come to my own knowledge, 

 and on one occasion a party of the officers of the 18th M. N. I., saw a pack 

 run into and kill a large samber stag (^Rusa) near Dharwar. I once cap- 

 tured a bitch and seven cubs of this species and had them alive for some time.'' 



I have come across the wild dog myself on several occasions, in 

 Malabar, the Wynaad, at the foot of the Ajunteh Ghat in Kandeish, near 

 Saugor, on the Neelgherries, &c., &c. It may be said to inhabit the whole 

 of India where sufficiently wooded to supply it with suitable game. The 

 pack I saw at Ajunteh had just run down a full grown female samber, 

 which our followers at once appropriated. In lower Malabar I came sud- ■ 

 denly on a pack that had just killed a tame female buffalo. It was much 

 worried about the throat, and had in the agonies of death given birth to 

 a foetus a few months old. This is the only instance I have heard of in 

 the south of India of cattle being kUled by them ; but in the north they 

 are said often to kill calves. 



The bitch has twelve to fourteen teats, and has at least six whelps 

 at a birth. They breed from January to March. Colonel Markham men- 

 tions that a breeding place was discovered by Mr. Wilson, near Simla, in 

 holes under rocks, several females apparently breeding together. At this 

 time it appears that they endeavour to hunt their game and kill it as near 

 their den as possible. I entirely disbelieve the native story of their cap- 

 turing their prey through the acridity of their urine. 



The wild dog is common in Ceylon, where called the Dhole by some, by 

 which name it has been treated of by Hamilton Smith and other writers, and 

 it is found over all the jungles of Assam, Burmah, the Malayan peninsula, 

 and the larger islands. Hodgson asserts that it extends into Tibet. 



