JACKALS. 187 
The jackal of the Punjaub and the North-west provinces 
of India, is described to me by Mr. John Barlow as generally 
of a brownish-grey, the tips of the hair being black, while those 
I have met with in Southern India were of a dark greyish tan 
colour on the crest and upper part of the body, with projecting 
black hair along the ridge of the back, the colour beneath being 
slightly paler, with the muzzle and ears darkest of all. 
My friends the Barlows tell me that in Northern India they 
have come across jackals of a perfectly spotless white fur, with 
eyes pink or blue, albinos in fact, and, upon one single occasion 
only, i\Ir. John Barlow saw one with its fur of an intensely 
black colour. The Albinos, five in number, were found on an 
island in the river Indus opposite to the large plain of “ Chach,” 
and the black variety was seen at the fort and village of Attock. 
It may not be generally known that skins of the ordinary 
Indian jackal are sometimes imported into Europe, and I lately 
saw here a carriage-rug made from them, but which the owner 
ascribed to the Indian fox. 
Though, as I have already said, our naturalists term the 
jackal Canis aureus or “ golden dog,” the natives of India, 
where the animal abounds, have never spoken of it as of that 
colour. They have stories in abundance of its wonderful 
cunning and sagacity, but these are of comparatively modern 
date ; and even in these the animal is nowhere called golden. 
While there are many ancient poems touching laws and religion, 
chiefly from the Hindus, which are amongst the oldest records 
in the world, it is passing strange that there does not appear to 
have risen a single native who concerned himself to write on 
the life and habits of animals. It is true, as Balfour says, that a 
work was written in Arabic about a.d. 1363, by one “Zacharya” 
on the “ Wonders of Creation,” which, two centuries later, was 
translated into Persian ; but it was a work of little account, and 
most of the descriptive text was purely imaginary. 
The term “jackal” seems to have come to us from the 
original Persian word “shaghal,” which in Turkish became 
“ chakiil ” and in French “chacal,” and this is very much as it 
would become to be known in Europe, for it ranges from its 
home in India and Ceylon through Persia, Arabia, and as far as 
S.E. Europe. In Africa it ranges as far south as Abyssinia 
and the surrounding districts. The native name for it in the 
Punjaub and some partsof Bengalis “gidur,” in Southern India 
it is more commonly called “ kola,” while from the ancient 
Sanscrit it takes the name of “ siyar.” I have never seen it in 
the Malayan Peninsula, though it may be there under the Malay 
name “ srigfila, but I am inclined to think that this is not the 
jackal, but a larger animal, the “ wild dog,” and known to 
naturalists as the Canis gamaliensis or rutilans : — 
In size and appearance, the Indian jackal is somewhat inter- 
mediate between the wolf and the fox, but smaller than the 
former, and I may safely say it is ordinarily twice the size of 
