I may mention that it was customary in former times, and doubtless is so still to some extent, to deposit the bodies of cholera victims anywhere in the jungle, instead of burying them in the ordinary way.  An official of the Forest Department told me that, passing one day near the place where the carcase of an elephant lay, he had the curiosity to go and look at it.  To his astonishment he found the flanks heaving as if the elephant were still alive, and while he was wondering what this could mean, two wild boars, which had tunnelled their way in, and were luxuriating on the contents of the carcase, suddenly rushed out.  From what I have hitherto said it seems plain that wild boar is not a safe article of food, unless, perhaps, when, it inhabits remote jungles where foul food can rarely be met with.  I have never made any measurements of wild boars, but Colonel Peyton—­a first-rate authority—­writing in the “Kanara Gazetteer,” says that some are to be found measuring forty inches high, and six feet long.

The jungle dog (kuon rutilans) is a wolfish-looking-dog of a golden brown colour, with hair of moderate length, and a short and slightly bushy tail.  It hunts in packs of seven and eight, and sometimes as many as twenty and even thirty have been reported.  In my neighbourhood I have never actually known them to attack cattle or persons, but Colonel Peyton tells us, in the “Kanara Gazetteer,” that they grew very bold in the 1876-77 famine, and killed great numbers of the half-starved cattle which were driven into the Kanara forests to graze, and since then a reward of 10 rupees has been paid for the destruction of each fully grown wild dog.  Colonel Peyton alludes to the native idea that these dogs attack and kill tigers, but says that no instance of their having killed a tiger is known.  At the same time it is, he says, a fact that the tiger will give up his kill to wild dogs, and will leave a place in which they are present in large numbers.  Some years ago I beat a jungle in which a tiger had killed a bullock, and in which another tiger had on a former occasion lain up, but the tiger was not there, and a number of jungle dogs were beaten out.  We afterwards found the tiger in a jungle about a mile away, and he had evidently abandoned his kill, for no other reason, apparently, than because of the presence of the dogs.  An old Indian sportsman tells me of a very widespread native tradition as to the action of these dogs previous to attacking a tiger.  Their belief is that the dogs first of all micturate on each others’ bushy tails, and, when rushing past the tiger, whisk their tails into his eyes and thus blind him with, the objectionable fluid, after which they can attack him with comparative impunity.  A forest officer informs me that the Gonds have a somewhat similar tradition, and that they believe that the dogs first of all micturate on the ground around the tiger, and that the effluvium has the effect of blinding him.[23] The late Mr. Sanderson, in his