568 
NATURAL HISTORY AND ORIGIN OF DOGS. 
after his expedition to the Oxus. It may be said generally that the 
.ears of domestic dogs were originally upright and pointed in all the 
races, with long hair and a sharp muzzle ; half erect in those with 
similar heads but short hair, and pendulous in the blunter-headed 
kinds. 
We may next notice, as in some measure allied both to the 
red dogs and Dholes, a remarkable wild species of Australia, called 
the New Holland Dingho , — Cards Australasia of recent writers. 
Some maintain that it is an imported species, and the very peculiar 
zoology of the great southern island where it now occurs does not 
discourage that idea. It is, perhaps, the only link among the 
larger quadrupeds which in any way connects the animal products 
of that country with those of other regions ; and its anomalous 
character and conduct in its present locality has been deemed an 
argument in favour of its being regarded as an imported rather than 
an indigenous species. Of this, however, there is no proof, either 
direct or traditional; and, in the meanwhile, we find it where it is, 
with all the essential attributes of a wild animal. It is found over 
all Australia, so far at least as we have actual knowledge of that 
terra fere incognita , and hunts either in pairs or in small families 
of five or six together. It is a large and powerful creature, not 
less active than ferocious, and when attacking sheep it seems to 
delight in killing as many as it can, more from an inconsiderate 
wantonness than the cravings of natural hunger. At a station 
called New Billholm, about 170 miles back from Sydney, one of 
them slew fifteen fine ewes in a single morning. When Van 
Dieman’s Land was first colonized by European shepherds, the 
flocks there also suffered greatly; and such was the strategy, as 
well as fierceness of the wild dogs, that neither guards nor watch- 
fires had much effect. Twelve hundred sheep and lambs were 
carried off or destroyed, in one settlement, in three months ; seven 
hundred in another. 
When these wild creatures fall in with domestic dogs, they im- 
mediately devour them; and in such onslaughts they are much 
more courageous than wolves, in so far as they will follow sporting 
dogs, no doubt from the most malign of motives, almost to their 
master’s feet. A Dingho, brought to England, the manners of 
which were presumed to have been greatly ameliorated by a long 
voyage, was no sooner landed than it sprung upon an unsuspecting 
ass, and would have destroyed it on the -spot, had no one come to 
the rescue. Another, which was kept in the Jardin des Plantes 
of Paris, would rush at the bars of cages, even when he saw that 
the inmate was a jaguar, a panther, or a bear — each of them 
naturally more than his match wherever there was a fair field and 
no favour. In confinement, these animals have been described as 
