CHAPTER VI. 



CARNIVORA-THEIR HABITS, POWER OF VISION AT NIGHT, AND PE- 

 CULIARITIES OF THETR FEET AND WHISKERS.-THE COUGAR, OR 

 PUMA DESCRIPTION EARLY RECORD OF COUGAR KILLED Al 

 SOREL ANECDOTE OF ITS STRENGTH AND FEROCITY. THE LYNX 

 AND WILD CAT DESCRIPTION DOMESTIC PUSS. 



We next come to the Feline family of the Carnivora the 

 Cat tribe, of which it will be well to say something before 

 enumerating their species. In it are comprised the most 

 ferocious and bloodthisty of the Mammalia. They hunt chiefly 

 by night, and are exceedingly cunning in the means by which 

 they entrap their victims Their power of seeing in the dark 

 has always been a mystery, nor is it strange that it should 

 be so, since man of all' animals has the least nocturnal power 

 of vision. 



In all night-prowling animals the eye is peculiarly large, 

 so as to admit a great number of the rays of light, for it is 

 seldom or never perfectly dark in the open air. It was sup 

 posed formely that the eyes of cats and owls generated light, 

 their structure being such as to produce a phosphorescence 

 by which objects became visible in the dark ! Recent expe- 

 riments however show, that their extra power of vision is 

 produced by the concentration of the rays of light by the eye 

 of the animal, and that when it is totally dark the eyes of 

 a cat cannot be seen. This faculty then depends on such a 

 structure of the eye, as enables it to collect the scattered rays 

 of light in greater quantities than that of other animals. 



In the foot of the cat tribe, the marks of the wisdom of 

 the Creator's design to perform the very purposes for which 

 we see they are employed, are particularly apparent. The 

 power of these animals, so to balance themselves when leaping 



