After Bruce left Algiers, he met with two other Fennecs, one of which had been brought by the caravan of Fezzan to the Island of Gerba, from whence it was carried to Tunis, where Bruce saw it; the other he bought at Sennaar, but where it came from he knew not; though it seems probable that it was a native of the date villages in the desert of Selima. These animals exactly resembled the one first seen at Algiers, and were known by the name of Fennec, and by no other.
The favourite food of Bruce’s Fennec was dates, or any sweet fruit; but it was also very fond of eggs: when hungry it would eat bread, especially with honey or sugar. His attention was immediately attracted if a bird flew near him, and he would watch it with an eagerness that could hardly be diverted from its object; but he was dreadfully afraid of a cat, and endeavoured to hide himself the moment he saw an animal of that species, though he showed no symptoms of preparing for any defence. Bruce never heard that he had any voice. During the day he was inclined to sleep, but became restless and exceedingly unquiet as night came on.
Bruce describes his Fennec as about ten inches long; the tail, five inches and a quarter, near an inch of it on the tip, black; from the point of the fore-shoulder to that of the fore-toe, two inches and seven-eighths; from the occiput to the point of the nose, two inches and a half. The ears were erect, and three inches and three-eighths long, with a plait or fold at the bottom on the outside; the interior borders of the ears were thickly covered with soft white hair, but the middle part was bare, and of a pink or rose colour; the breadth of the ears was one inch and one eighth, and the interior cavity very large. The pupil of the eye was large and black; the iris, deep blue. It had thick and strong whiskers; the nose was sharp at the tip, black and polished. The upper jaw was projecting; the number of cutting teeth in each jaw, six, those in the under jaw the smallest; canine teeth, two in each jaw, long, large, and exceedingly pointed; the number of molar teeth, four on each side, above and below. The legs were small; feet very broad, with four toes, armed with crooked, black, and sharp claws on each; those on the fore-feet more crooked and sharp than those behind. The colour of the body was dirty white, bordering on cream-colour; the hair on the belly rather whiter, softer and longer than on the rest of the body. His look was sly and wily. Bruce adds that the Fennec builds his nest on trees, and does not burrow in the earth.
Illiger, in his generic description of Megalotis, states the number of molar teeth on each side of the upper jaw to be six, but gives no account of those in the lower; nor does it appear on what authority he describes the teeth at all, or where he inspected his type. In other respects, his description agrees pretty closely with that given by Bruce.
Sparman[82] took the Fennec to be of the species he has called Zerda, a little animal found in the sands of Cambeda, near the Cape of Good Hope; and Pennant and Gmelin have called Bruce’s animal, after Sparman, Canis cerdo; Brander considered it as a species of fox; Blumenbach rather as belonging to the Viverræ. Illiger quotes Lacépède as having made a distinct genus of it, Fennecus[83], and has himself placed it as one, under the name of Megalotis, in the order Falculata, in the same family with, and immediately preceding the genera Canis and Hyena.
M. Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, assuming Bruce’s account to be imperfect and inaccurate, supposes that the Fennec is neither more nor less than a Galago; but M. Desmarest differs from him in opinion, and places it in a situation analogous to that assigned it by Illiger, at the end of the Digitigrades, in the order Carnassiers. Cuvier merely takes the following short notice of this animal in a note, “Le Fennec de Bruce que Gmelin a nommé Canis cerdo, et Illiger Megalotis, est trop peu connu pour pouvoir être classé. C’est un petit animal d’Afrique, dont les oreilles égalent presque le corps en grandeur, et qui grimpe aux arbres, mais on n’en a descrit ni les dents ni les doigts.” (Reg. Anim. I. 151. note). This eminent zoologist appears from the above to hold our countryman’s veracity, or at least his accuracy of observation, and fidelity of description, in the same low estimation as M. Geoffroy Saint Hilaire; or he would hardly have talked of the ears of the Fennec being nearly as large as its body[84], or have asserted that neither the teeth nor toes have been described. But the illustrious foreigners of whom we have, in no offensive tone we hope, just spoken, are not the only persons who have hesitated to place implicit confidence in all that Bruce has given to the world: his own countrymen have shown at least an equal disposition to set him down as a dealer in the marvellous. Time, however, and better experience, are gradually doing the Abyssinian traveller that justice which his cotemporaries were but too ready to deny him.
M. Desmarest considers all the characters which Bruce has given of the Fennec as correct, “not conceiving it possible, that he could have assumed the far too severe tone he adopted in speaking of Sparman and Brander, if he had not been perfectly sure of his facts.”
Mr. Griffith has given the figures of two animals, both, as he conceives, belonging to this genus; one of them came from the Cape of Good Hope, and is now in the Museum at Paris; it is named by Cuvier Canis megalotis, and is described by Desmarest in his Mammalogie, (Ency. Meth. Supp. p. 538): Major Smith has called it Megalotis Lalandii, to distinguish it from Bruce’s Fennec. The other animal is from the interior of Nubia, and is preserved in the Museum at Frankfort. Both the figures are from the accurate and spirited pencil of Major Hamilton Smith. The first animal is as large as the common fox, and decidedly different from Bruce’s Fennec; the second, Major Smith considers to be Bruce’s animal.
In the fifth volume of the Bulletin des Sciences, sect. 2. p. 262., is an extract from a memoir of M. Leuckart, (Isis, 2 Cahier, 1825), on the Canis cerdo, or Zerda of naturalists, in which it is stated that M. M. Temminck and Leuckart saw the animal in the Frankfort Museum, which had been previously drawn by Major Smith, and recognized it for the true Zerda; and the former gentleman, in the prospectus of his Monographies de Mammalogie, announced it as belonging to the genus Canis, and not to that of Galago. M. Leuckart coincides in opinion with M. Temminck, and conceives that the genus Megalotis, or Fennecus, must be suppressed, “the animal very obviously belonging to the genus Canis, and even to the subgenus Vulpes.” He adds, “that it most resembles the C. corsac; the number of teeth and their form are precisely the same as those of the fox, which it also greatly resembles in its feet, number of toes, and form of tail. The principal difference between the fox and the Zerda consists in the great length of the ears of the latter and its very small size.”
The singular controversy, not even yet decided, that has arisen respecting this little animal, has induced us to preface our description of the individual before us, by this sketch of its history.