•yd Through the BraziHan Wilderness 



by flight. It was curious to see one lumbering off at a 

 rocking canter, the big bushy tail held aloft. One, while 

 fighting the dogs, suddenly threw itself on its back, evi- 

 dently hoping to grasp a dog with its paws; and it now 

 and then reared, in order to strike at its assailants. In 

 one patch of thick jungle we saw a black howler monkey 

 sitting motionless in a tree top. We also saw the swamp- 

 deer, about the size of our blacktail. It is a real swamp 

 animal, for we found it often in the papyrus-swamps, 

 and out in the open marsh, knee-deep in the water, among 

 the aquatic plants. 



The tough little horses bore us well through the 

 marsh. Often in crossing bayous and ponds the water 

 rose almost to their backs; but they splashed and waded 

 and if necessary swam through. The dogs were a wild- 

 looking set. Some were of distinctly wolfish appearance. 

 These, we were assured, were descended in part from 

 the big red wolf of the neighborhood, a tall, lank animal, 

 with much smaller teeth than a big northern wolf. The 

 domestic dog is undoubtedly descended from at least a 

 dozen different species of wild dogs, wolves, and jackals, 

 some of them probably belonging to what we style 

 different genera. The degree of fecundity or lack of 

 fecundity between different species varies in extraordi- 

 nary and inexplicable fashion in different families of 

 mammals. In the horse family, for instance, the species 

 are not fertile inter se; whereas among the oxen, species 

 seemingly at least as widely separated as the horse, ass, 

 and zebra — species such as the domestic ox, bison, yak, 

 and gaur — ^breed freely together and their offspring are 

 fertile; the lion and tiger also breed together, and pro- 



