which peculiarity he is
to be looked upon as an unmitigated nuisance.

He is mischievous too occasionally, and will commit havoc amongst
poultry and young kids and lambs, but, as a general rule, he is a
harmless, timid creature, and when animal food fails he will take
readily to vegetables. Indian corn seems to be one of the things
chiefly affected by him; the fruit of the wild behr-tree (_Zizyphus
jujuba_) is another, as I have personally witnessed. In Ceylon he
is said to devour large quantities of ripe coffee-berries, the seeds,
which pass through entire, are carefully gathered by the coolies,
who get an extra fee for the labour, and are found to be the best
for germination, as the animal picks the finest fruit. According to
Sykes he devastates the vineyards in the west of India, and is said
to be partial to sugar-cane. The jackal is credited with digging
corpses out of the shallow graves, and devouring bodies. I once came
across the body of a child in the vicinity of a jungle village which
had been unearthed by one. At Seonee we had, at one time, a plague
of mad jackals, which did much damage. Sir Emerson Tennent writes
of a curious horn or excrescence which grows on the head of the jackal
occasionally, which is regarded by the Singhalese as a potent charm,
by the instrumentality of which every wish can be realised, and
stolen property will return of its own accord! This horn, which is
called _Nari-comboo_, is said to grow only on the head of the leader
of the pack.

The domestic dog is supposed to owe its origin to this species, as
well as to the wolf, but all conjecture on this point can be but pure
speculation. Certain it is that the pariahs about villages are
strikingly like jackals, at least in many cases, and they will freely
interbreed.

The writer in the _India Sporting Review_ alluded to by me in writing
of the wolf, mentions some experiments made in crossing dogs with
jackals. "First cross, hybrid between a female jackal and Scotch
terrier dog, or half jackal and half dog; second cross, between the
hybrid jackal and terrier, or quarter jackal and three-quarters dog;
third cross between the quarter jackal and terrier, or seven-eighths
dog and one-eighth jackal. Of the five pups comprising the litter,
of which the last was one, two were fawn-coloured and very like
pariahs, while three had the precise livery of the jackal; noses
sharp and pointed; ears large and erect; head and muzzle like the
jackal. Th