“Thirteen Years amongst the Wild Beasts of India,” mentions an instance reported to him by the natives of their finding a tiger sitting up with his back to a bamboo bush, so that nothing could pass behind him, while the wild dogs were walking up and down and passing quite close to him, evidently with the view of annoying the tiger, and the position then taken up by the tiger seemed to show that he was apprehensive of an attack.  From his experience of the great power of the wild dog, Mr. Sanderson entertained no doubt that they could kill a tiger, though he knows of no instance of their having done so.  The old Indian sportsman above alluded to told me of a case where a tiger had been marked down by native shikaris, and where they afterwards found wild dogs eating the carcase of the tiger, which they had presumably killed, but I cannot find any account of the dogs having been seen in the act of killing a tiger, though I can easily conceive that a hungry tiger, and an equally hungry pack of wild dogs may have come into collision over a newly killed animal, and that the dogs may then in desperation have killed the tiger.

A Coorg planter who has had opportunities of observing the habits of those dogs, tells me that when hunting a deer they do not run in a body, but spread out rather widely, so as to catch the deer on the turn if it moved to right or left.  Some of the dogs hang behind to rest themselves, so as to take up the running when other dogs, which have pressed the deer hard, get tired.  He once had a bitch the product of a cross between a Pariah and a jungle dog.  When she had pups she concealed them in the jungle, and in order to find them she had to be carefully watched and followed up.  She went through many manoeuvres to prevent the discovery of her pups, and pottered about in the neighbourhood of the spot where she had concealed them, as if bent on nothing in particular.  Then she made a sudden rush into the jungle and disappeared.  After much search her pups were found in a hole about three feet deep, which she had dug on the side of a rising piece of ground.  The bitch did not bark—­the jungle dog does not—­and the pups barked but slightly, but the next generation barked as domestic dogs do.

Many years ago I met with a very singular and puzzling circumstance in connection with jungle dogs.  I had offered a reward of five rupees for a pup, and one day several natives from a village some three or four miles away, brought me a pup—­apparently about six or eight months old.  This, it appears, they had caught by placing some nets near the carcase of a tiger I had killed, and on which a pack of these dogs was feeding.  They drove the dogs towards the nets, which they jumped, but the pup in question was caught in the net.  My cook now appeared on the scene and declared that the pup belonged to him, and that he had brought it from Bangalore, and on hearing this I declined, of course, to pay the reward.  As I had never, and have never, seen a jungle dog