182 



THE CAT TRIBE. 



laborious, but not very dangerous. In general 

 it tries to get out of the way of men and 

 dogs, while it has a peculiar hankering after 

 cats. But when driven into a corner, hotly 

 pursued or wounded, it does battle for itself 



spiritedly, and woe to the dog which it can stronger than a cat! 



manage to reach with its terrible claws! 

 And this need not excite wonder. One 

 ought to be very careful in approaching a 

 wounded wild cat; how much more so then 

 in approaching a lynx, which is infinitely 





Fig. 85. The Caracal (Lynx Canical). 



An illustration is furnished of the Caracal 

 (L. Caracal), fig. 85, as representing the 

 lynxes of the south. Its very long legs, its 

 slender and almost lean body, and its uniform 

 reddish-yellow coat proclaim it at the first 

 glance to be an inhabitant of the desert. 

 The colour varies more or less from yellow 

 to brown or brownish-red, but always seems 

 to be wonderfully adapted to the districts 

 which it inhabits. Where there are no 

 fragments of rock, fissures, and caves, then 

 pistachios and myrtle bushes or the tufts of 

 the alfa-grass afford the caracal secure retreats 

 in which it may cower by day. In Algeria 

 it is almost extirpated. In the Sahara it is 

 detested as the ravager of the poultry-yards 

 and the dangerous enemy of the watch-dogs. 

 It has never yet been tamed. 



Europe supports two species of lynxes. 

 The stronger of the two, the Polar Lynx 

 (L. vulgaris), fig. 86, was formerly spread 

 over all Germany and France as far as the 

 Alps and the Pyrenees, and to be found in 

 forests everywhere. At the present day 

 lynxes are a great rarity in the Alps, the 

 Ardennes, and even the Bohemian forest, 

 while Norway, Sweden, and the whole of the 

 eastern part of our continent still harbour 

 a pretty large number of them. Only on 

 one occasion in the course of my numerous 

 residences in the High Alps, one night during 

 a terrible snowstorm, did I hear the strong 

 harsh voice of the lynx in the neighbourhood 

 of my tent, which was erected on the Aar 

 Glacier. The next morning we could follow 

 its track across the glacier, and two days 



