I. THE KING OF BEASTS. 19 



used for this purpose by the jaguar, and I dare say most of 

 us have had to rebuke puss for making use of the drawing- 

 room furniture for this purpose. V 



The lion, then, belongs to the great family of cats, of 

 which there are about fifty existing kinds or species. He 

 rules in Africa and South- West Asia : while his cousin the 

 tiger, also admittedly of royal blood, holds his court in 

 Southern and Eastern Asia. Although these territories 

 overlap a little in South-West Asia they are in the main 

 tolerably distinct. Extending into the domain of both 

 these royal beasts, and having therefore a wider range than 

 either is the panther or leopard, an arboreal animal which 

 frequents the forests, while the lion and tiger are found in 

 jungles and thickets, and seldom or never climb trees. 

 The leopard may be distinguished at a glance from the 

 tiger by his smaller size and ring-spotted coat ; for the 

 tiger is not spotted but striped. A Javan variety of the 

 leopard is however black, with only the ghosts of spots. 

 And there is scarcely a more cruel looking beast on 

 the face of the earth than this black panther with his 

 treacherous gray-blue eyes. These are the great cats of 

 the old world. 



Not much inferior in size however are the ounce a 

 large thick-furred cat that lives in the highlands of Central 

 Asia, seldom descending far below the snowy regions 

 and the clouded tiger which dwells in the trees of South- 

 Eastern Asia, the Malay peninsula, and the great islands 

 Borneo, Sumatra and Java. And here we must add the 

 beautiful spotted cheetah or hunting leopard, with its 

 delicate rounded head, long limbs and tail, and lithe body, 

 one of the swiftest beasts of the field, but perhaps the least 

 cat-like of cats. It is found in both Africa and Central 

 Asia. In Europe we have no very large cats, the largest 

 being the lynx, easily recognized by the pointed ears, each 



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