“When the tiger,” says the naturalist, “has killed some large animal,
such as a buffalo which he cannot consume at one time, the jackals
collect round the carcase at a respectful distance and wait patiently
until the tiger moves off. Then they rush from all directions,
carousing upon the slaughtered buffalo, each anxious to eat as much as
it can contain in the shortest time.”
The human jackal is one of the most squalid and sordid creatures and
features of war. We saw him in Dublin the other day emerging from his
slum den to loot Sackville Street. Every battlefield feeds its carrion
beasts and birds.
This picture of Belgium and its jackals is doubtless only too true.
Mr. Raemaekers and the Dutch have better means of knowing than we. The
jackal, says the same naturalist, belongs to the _Canidæ_, the “dog
tribe.” The scientific name of the true dog is _Canis familiaris_,
“the household dog.” The jackal is _Canis aureus_, the “gold dog.” The
epithet describes no doubt his colour. The human _Canis aureus_ perhaps
deserves his title on not less obvious grounds.
“The continent of Europe,” the naturalist goes on, “is free from the
jackal.” It was supposed till yesterday to be free from the lion and
tiger.
But in the prehistoric times of the cave man, geologists say, there was
both in England and Europe the great “sabre-tooth” tiger. Kipling, who
knows everything about beasts, knows him and puts him into his “Story
of Ung”: “The sabre-tooth tiger dragging a man to his lair.”
To-day the cave tiger has come back and with him the cave jackal. There
is a terrible beauty about the tiger. The jackal is a mean and hideous
brute. But both are out of date. Did not Monsieur Capus say the other
day that Europe “cannot allow a return of the cave epoch”?