THE JACKAL
“What you have just told us, Uncle Paul,” Jules remarked, “is not
unlike what navigators tell us of the life of savages.”
“Nevertheless,” rejoined his uncle, “it is our own history, my friend;
it is really a chapter of French history.”
“I never read anything like it in my history-book.”
“Your schoolbooks generally begin with the Frankish chief, Pharamond,
at an epoch when civilization had already made considerable progress,
and when agriculture and grazing had been known for a long time. My
story goes back to a much earlier period, one almost lost in the
darkness of the past, and shows us man in his painful beginnings,
unskilled and almost wholly dependent on hunting for his food and
clothing.
“In that state of extreme destitution in which the day’s supply of food
depended, above all, on fleetness of foot and quickness of scent, the
dog was the most precious of acquisitions. With its aid, first the game
fell more abundantly under the stone hatchet and flint-head arrow; then
came the possibility of the herd, which, furnishing a reserve of food,
freed man from the alternation of famine and abundance, and gave him
leisure to devise means for the improvement of his condition. Then the
ox was tamed, the horse mastered, the sheep domesticated, and finally
came agriculture, preëminent source of our well-being. That is how the
tattooed hunters of our country lost the barbarism of their habits and
advanced from one stage of progress to another, until they became the
cultivated race from which we are descended. First in Asia, then
throughout all Europe, a similar development took place: everywhere the
dog was the first and most valuable of man’s conquests, and everywhere
the dog has represented the first element of progress. Without the dog,
no such thing as human society, says an old book of the East, whence
this most serviceable animal came. And the old book is a thousand times
right, for without the dog the chase in old times would have been too
little productive to satisfy the devouring hunger of a very thinly
scattered population; without the dog, no herds or flocks, no assured
food, and consequently no leisure, for the inexorable necessity of
providing food would have occupied the whole time. Without leisure, no
attempt at culture, no observations leading to the birth of science, no
reflections bearing fruit in manufactures and commerce. The primitive
mode of life was a hand-to-mouth existence, with a slice of broiled
urus or elk to stay the cravings of hunger. A surfeit one day was
followed by fasting the next; it all depended on the chances of the
hunt. Hatchets continued to be fashioned out of stone, the tattooing of
the body in blue went on, and at the entrance to the hut the enemy’s
head was still nailed as a horrible trophy of war.”
“I see,” said Louis, “how immensely useful the dog has been and still
is to us; so I should like to know at what time and by whom this
valuable animal was trained for our service.”
“No one could give a satisfactory answer to that question. The taming
of the dog goes back to the earliest times and all remembrance of it is
lost. There is the same deep obscurity as to its origin and the wild
species from which it is descended. Nowhere has the dog been seen by
travelers in its primitive state, in a state of complete independence.
If some dogs are found leading a wild life, they are runaways; that is
to say, dogs that have fled from domestic life to live as they please
in desert regions. Such are those that burrow and hunt for themselves
in the vast plains of South America. They are certainly descended from
domestic dogs carried thither by Europeans; for at the time of its
discovery, nearly four centuries ago, the New World had no dogs. All
that can be affirmed is that the dog came to us from Asia already
trained for man’s use. Apparently Asia made a gift to Europe of the
oldest known domestic animals, such as the ox, the ass, and the hen.
“On account of the almost infinite variety in respect to its coat, its
shape, and its size, it is suspected that the dog is not derived from a
single source but comes from various species that have been improved by
man and profoundly modified in their characteristics by cross-breeding.
Among these wild species to which is given the honor of being regarded
as ancestors of the domestic dog, I will mention the jackal, which
abounds in Africa as well as Asia.
“The jackal looks a little like the wolf, but is smaller and is
harmless to man. Its coat is red, varied with white under the stomach
and black on the back. It has a pointed muzzle and erect ears. Its
timidity causes it to feed on the remnants left over by animals bolder
and stronger than itself. When the gorged lion abandons its
half-devoured prey, the jackals, crouching in the neighborhood and
waiting until his lordship has finished, hasten up in companies to the
disdained carcass and clean it to the bone. For the same reason the
jackal frequents in troops the outskirts of villages and encampments in
the hope of finding garbage and carrion. In the daytime it stays
quietly in its den among the rocks, but at nightfall it issues forth in
quest of food with a sort of sharp howling that continues all night.
There is nothing so disagreeable as the nocturnal concert of a band of
jackals prowling around dwellings. One of them begins with a cry
something like argee in a very piercing and prolonged tone. Scarcely
has it finished when a second takes up the refrain and improves upon
it; then a third and a fourth, until the whole band has joined in,
producing a veritable charivari composed of a mixed chorus of
discordant howls. After this musical feat, solos are in order again,
interspersed with choral productions; and so it goes on until daybreak.
Such is the infernal music that awaits the sleeper every night.”
“Oh, what disagreeable neighbors!” exclaimed Jules. “If the dog had
kept any of those detestable habits it would be a very troublesome
animal, useful though it is.”
“The dog shows not seldom, it must be admitted, a mania for making the
night hideous; but it cannot be reproached with anything comparable to
the jackal’s concert. The dog has two cries, without counting those
that are secondary. One of the two is natural, the howl; the other
artificial, the bark. Is it necessary to point out to you the
difference between the two?”
“I know what you mean, Uncle,” Jules was quick to reply. “The dog howls
when it gives a long, wild cry, so mournful and terrifying in the
night; it barks when it gives those short, jerky yelps. It howls from
fright, sadness, ennui; it barks with joy and pleasure.”
“Yes, that is it. I told you, then, that howling is the dog’s natural
voice. In it can be found, but with a very different action of the
throat and a less sharp tone, something of the jackal’s cry. As for the
bark, it is an artificial utterance; that is to say, it has been
acquired. Dogs that have gone back to the wild state, as for example
those of South America, can no longer bark. Deserters from
civilization, they have lost the language and are reduced to their
primitive howling, which they share with the jackal and the wolf.”
“And how does a dog learn to bark when it is with us?”
“It learns by hearing its fellows, the other dogs, bark. If it were
brought up far from its own kind, it would never know how to bark, any
more than we could speak our language if we had never heard it spoken.
Well, the jackal also can acquire the habit of barking by education.
Placed in company with the dog, which by its example initiates it into
a new language, it barks at first badly, then a little better, then
well, and in a short time the scholar almost equals the master.
“The primitive species, if it really is the jackal, must have, as you
see, undergone profound changes affecting even its most inveterate
habits, to become the domestic dog. It must have lost its habit of
nocturnal prowling, forgotten its predilection for concerts of
ear-piercing cries, learned to bark, and, what is far more difficult,
exchanged its timidity for boldness. Another improvement was
indispensable. The jackal gives forth from all over its body a strong
fishy smell. To become the companion of man and to live in his home,
the animal had to be rid of this infection. That is what the progress
of time has done almost completely: to-day the dog has scarcely any
odor except when warm from rapid hunting; but it is likely, in view of
its presumed origin, that in the beginning the dog was not precisely a
bouquet of roses beside its master. Doubtless it was denied access to
the hut, which it would have infected with its odor, and was relegated
to a distant spot outside in the open air.
“Those are not all the jackal’s defects. It is true the animal is
easily tamed, but without acquiring the docility and attachment of the
dog. When pressed by hunger, it is gentle and caressing toward the
master who gives it something to eat; when satiated, it shows its teeth
and tries to bite if any one reaches out to take hold of it. Children,
whom dogs so love to play with, do not gain its confidence any more
than grown people. Whoever should try to pull its tail in play would
certainly get bitten.”
“Our Medor has a much better disposition,” said Emile; “the more pranks
I play with him, the better he likes it. I’d a good deal rather play
with him than with a stinking jackal.”
“Medor owes his excellent qualities, particularly his honest, dogged
patience, to the extraordinary pains taken during long centuries to
improve his breed; but certainly the primitive dog must have been a
pretty rough playmate for little boys. He did not allow any one to pull
his mustache, did not give the paw, did not play dead with four legs in
the air, did not wait for the command to jump and snap the crust of
bread placed on the tip of his nose. The jackal, docile only when
hungry, shows you what could be expected from Medor’s surly ancestors.”
“Then even with much care the tame jackal never acquires the dog’s
gentleness?” queried Louis.
“Never. Some, more tractable than others, grow a little more gentle,
but without ever becoming entirely submissive. They always retain
something of their primitive wildness and cannot be left wholly free
without committing misdeeds or even running away from home.”
“If thorough taming is impossible, I don’t see how the dog can come
from the jackal.”
“Complete domestication does not take place so quickly as you think, my
dear friend. A long succession of individuals is necessary,
transmitting from one to another the desired aptitudes, and increasing
them by turning to account such gain as may be noted in the best
examples of each new generation. Let us assume that in ancient times
man had taken into his keeping the half-tamed jackal, such as we could
to-day possess ourselves of. However surly it may remain, the animal
will be better after several years’ education than it was at the
beginning. With continued care the good qualities acquired, though
weak, will, as we say of the snowball, increase by rolling. In fact it
is a rule, as well with beasts as with us, that the son inherits the
father’s qualities, good or bad. Thus the jackal’s little ones, brought
up with man, will from their birth be half-tamed, as were their
parents. As character is far from being the same in a whole family,
some will be wilder, others more submissive. The first are rejected,
the second kept, as soon as it is possible to recognize this diversity
of disposition. Here, then, the sons, with continued training, become
superior to the fathers. The same care, the same selection, in the
third generation, will insure increased progress in the grandchildren.
The acquired improvement will be transmitted by inheritance to the
great-grandchildren, these will still further add to it, and it will be
inherited by their descendants, or, if not by all, at least by some.
These latter will be raised in preference to the others. However slight
the progress from one generation to the next, it will continually be
added to by the intervention of man who always selects for breeding
purposes the most promising offspring, until, little by little, in
course of time the beast that was intractable in the beginning at last
becomes docile.
“This onward march, which is kept up by accumulating in the animal,
through inheritance, the qualities desired, by always picking out the
individual possessing these qualities in the highest degree, is called
selection, meaning choice or sorting. The method of selection, which
to-day still renders the greatest service to the perfecting of species,
has doubtless played an important part in the domestication of the dog;
but that alone is not what has made the dog such as we now have him.
The astonishing variety of dogs can only be explained by the multiplex
origin of the animal and the crossing of the various breeds. I have
just told you of one species, the common jackal, which is suspected to
be one of the dog’s ancestors. To finish what I have to say on this
exceedingly obscure question, I will add a few words concerning a
second species.
“There is found in the mountains of Abyssinia a jackal with very
slender body, an arched abdomen, long and narrow head, long,
upward-curling tail—in short, a veritable greyhound in every respect
except that it has erect instead of drooping ears. Everything induces
belief that this jackal is the progenitor of our greyhound.
“I will end with this conclusion of one of our most learned masters on
the origin of domestic animals: ‘Existing in great numbers in Asia,
where, history tells us, the dog was first domesticated, jackals
commonly live within reach of human habitations, to which they
sometimes make their way of their own accord. They are eminently
sociable, are easily tamed, and become attached to their masters. They
associate freely with the dog. Finally, and this trait dispels my last
lingering doubt as to their kinship, they resemble in the highest
degree, both in shape and in color, and even in voice where they have
learned to bark, the least modified of the canine species. In several
countries the resemblance between jackals and dogs is so striking that
it has led all travelers who have had an opportunity to compare these
animals on the spot to the same conclusion: the jackal and the dog
represent respectively the parent stock and the scion, and are to be
found reunited again in various parts of Asia and Africa.’”