THE DONKEY. 125 



of the most deadly foes of their race lay In wait 

 for them. Indeed, far-fetched as it may appear 

 at first sight, I am inclined to adopt the crocodile 

 hypothesis to account for this curious and uni- 

 versal prejudice of the donkey. 



The dogs of Egypt have the greatest horror of 

 crocodiles, and approach the river with the utmost 

 caution. They even, as Herodotus remarked 

 long ago, run along the bank as they lap. Sir 

 Samuel Baker, in his ' Rifle and Hound in 

 Ceylon,' tells a most instructive tale of a pariah 

 dog which refused, when hunting, to cross a nar- 

 row stream. Sir S. Baker afterwards discovered 

 that there were alligators lurking among the reeds, 

 and of these the dog had the most abject terror. 



Crocodiles and similar reptiles were much more 

 plentiful in the past than they are now. The 

 rivers in all the warmer parts of the world once 

 swarmed with them. If, as is probable, the wild 

 asses' forefathers have inhabited a crocodile-in- 

 fested country ever since the Tertiary epoch, they 

 must have had business relations (of a very un- 

 profitable sort for the poor jackass) with these 

 voracious saurians for hundreds of thousands of 

 years. It would be a matter for surprise, 

 especially when we consider the rigidly conser- 



