CARNARIA. 99 



Felis, Linn. 



Of all the Carnaria the Cats are the most completely and powerfully 

 armed. Their short and round muzzle, short jaws, and particularly their 

 retractile nails, which, being raised perpendicularly, and hidden between 

 the toes, when at rest, by the action of elastic ligament, lose neither point 

 nor edge, render them most formidable animals, the larger species espe- 

 cially. They have two false molars above, and two below : their superior 

 carnivorous tooth has three lobes, and a blunted heel on the inner side, 

 the inferior, two pointed and trenchant lobes, without any heel : they have 

 but a very small tuberculous tooth above, without any thing to correspond 

 to it below. The species of this genus are very numerous and various 

 with regard to size and colour, though they are all similar with respect to 

 form. We can only subdivide them by referring to the difference of size 

 and the length of the hair, characters of but little importance. 

 At the head of the genus we find 



F. leo, L. ; Buff. VIII. i. 11. (The Lion). Distinguished by 

 its uniform tawny colour, the tuft of hair at the end of the tail, and 

 the flowing mane which clothes the head, neck, and shoulders of the 

 male. Of all beasts of prey, this is the strongest and most coura- 

 geous. Formerly scattered through the three parts of the old world, 

 it seems at present to be confined to Africa and some of the neigh - 

 bouring parts of Asia. The head of the Lion is more square than 

 that of the following species. 



Tigers are large, short-haired species, most commonly marked 

 with vivid spots. 



F. tigrls, Buff. VIII. ix. (The Royal Tiger). As large as the 

 Lion, but the body is longer, and the head rounder ; of a lively fawn 

 colour above; a pure white below, irregularly crossed with black 

 stripes ; the most cruel of all quadrupeds, and the scourge of the 

 East Indies. Such are his strength and the velocity of his move- 

 ments, that during the march of armies he has been seen to seize a 

 soldier while on horseback, and bear him to the depths of the forest, 

 without affording a possibility of rescue. 



F. onga, L. ; Azzar. pi. ix; Fred. Cuv. Mammif. (The .laguar). 

 Nearly the size of the Royal Tiger, and almost as dangerous ; a lively 



gnawed, and even fractured by particular teeth. Amongst the remains were teetli 

 and excrements of the Hyanas also, the existence of which has been explained on 

 the principle that it is the ascertained habit of Hyasnas to devour the dead bodies 

 of their own species, being, like wolves, gregarious, and hunting mostly in packs. 

 Similar fossil remains of supposed antediluvian Hysenas have been found in France 

 and Germany, in caves; but the circumstances under which they have been disco- 

 vered lead to the conclusion that the bones either belong to animals that had fallen 

 through fissures opening into these caves, or were carried by water through subter- 

 ranean canals. The species, which is unknown as it existed previously to the deluge, 

 is called H. SpeL-ea, Cave Hyana, and by means of that exact knowledge of the laws 

 of animal organization which he so eminently possessed, Cuvier has been able to 

 build up afresh the whole of the structure of this species, and has given the following 

 description of the unseen animal in another of his great works : — size larger by a 

 third proportion than the Hyaena rayee, Cains hyccnus; the muzzle, however, is 

 shorter, and the teeth must have been much larger, from the appearance of their 

 fragments, which consist but of stumps, than those of the existing races. — Eng. Ed. 



