20 ANIMAL SKETCHES. CHAP. 



with a tuft of long stiff hair at the tip. At Berlin I saw a 

 charming little baby lynx who had a large rabbit for a 

 playfellow. The rabbit, a sedate creature, for whom the 

 days of playful and giddy youth were long past, seemed 

 scarcely to appreciate the rough-and-tumble game on which 

 Master Lynx good-humouredly insisted. 



But though the larger cats are now no longer to be 

 found in Europe, this was not always so, and the lion him- 

 self was wont within historic times to seek whom he could 

 devour in its south-eastern districts ; for Herodotus tells 

 us that lions attacked the baggage camels of the army of 

 Xerxes in Macedonia. And in yet earlier times, when men 

 were cave dwellers and fashioned rude weapons and other 

 implements in stone, a great cat, the cave lion, regarded by 

 Mr. Boyd Dawkins as a variety of the existing lion, ranged 

 over Northern Europe and even over our own England. 



In Australia, that strange fossil continent, there are no 

 indigenous cats great or small ; but in America, besides 

 smaller species, there are two great cats, the puma, which 

 i# often spoken of as the South American lion, and the 

 jaguar, which is a spotted cat and takes the place of the 

 old world leopard. Both these creatures may generally be 

 seen in the Zoo. The puma is a tawny beast considerably 

 smaller than the lion and destitute of mane. He never 

 roars ; but I am sorry to say he sometimes swears 

 horribly. The whelps, of which there are two fascinating 

 little fellows, now at Clifton, are spotted like the little 

 lions ; so that we believe that both these tawny creatures, 

 in the old and new world, come from spotted ancestors. 

 The mother of the Clifton whelps is quiet and gentle, and 

 likes to be fondled by the keeper; but the male is bad- 

 tempered. Professor Parker says that the female may 

 often be seen swearing at her lord in a most reprehensible 

 manner ; but here the tables are turned. The other big 



