CAT. 



719 



neons notions of the animal kingdom, which we are so 

 apt to derive from judging- of its members as we judi?e 

 of mankind. Men proceed, both in passion and in 

 action, by the judgment of experience, that experi- 

 ence never amounts to an absolute certainty, and in 

 very many, perhaps the greater number of instances, 

 it is weak and erroneous. Hence, human beings are 

 often excited to foolish or unnecessary passion, and 

 stimulated to erroneous, useless, or improper action. 

 Men are therefore often cruel, deceitful, injudicious, 

 and the whole list of the results of mistaken judg- 

 ment, that can arise either from ignorance, improper 

 habits, or uncontrolled passions. But in these 

 respects man stands singly in the world, the only 

 being in it capable of moral good and moral evil, 

 the only being that can decide by his own judgment ; 

 and therefore the only being which can in any 

 instance be said to do wrong. But we are apt to 

 overlook this distinction, and impute something 

 resembling virtue and vice to animals, in the same 

 way that we are disposed to attribute to them a cer- 

 tain inferior degree or species of reason. 



This is a much more serious error than those who 

 do not reflect carefully upon it are apt to suppose ; 

 and the mischief of it operates in two ways; it leads 

 us to treat beasts as though they were men, and also 

 to treat men as though they were beasts ; and 

 although we do not take the trouble of tracing this 

 root of evil in every or almost in any case, yet there 

 is not the smallest doubt that to it are owing many of 

 those crimes, follies, and sufferings, which so chequer 

 the annals of the human race. 



Among animals, as among plants, there is nothing 

 which can, in any rational sense of the word, be con- 

 sidered as evil. The creature, whatever may be the 

 nature of its food, and however it may destroy other 

 creatures in the obtaining of that food, has no bad 

 passion to gratify, no purpose of any kind to serve 

 that is, no purpose planned by itself; for, how artful 

 soever it may appear to us to be in the capture of its 

 prey, or even -in the construction of snares to assist 

 in that capture, still we can refer its operations to 

 nothing save general obedience to the grand law of 

 nature, of which its actions form a part, so long as 

 that action is necessary for maintaining the proper 

 balance of the system that is, the greatest good of 

 the whole ; and when this necessity for it ceases, 

 when circumstances, sometimes open to our observation 

 and sometimes concealed, come round and render it 

 less necessary, its members fall off; and when the 

 necessity for it ceases altogether, its bones are only 

 found in the earth as memorials of a former and 

 different state of things, and they no doubt remain 

 there, in part at least, to stimulate us to inquiry into 

 a longer acquaintance with the earth's history than 

 we can obtain from those events which we see taking 

 place around us. The most powerful animals of the 

 genus under consideration are met with only in those 

 parts of the world where the powers of life are 

 remarkably active, subject to much seasonal change, 

 and liable to be overrun by wild plants of lofty 

 growth, and wild animals of various kinds, if man, 

 in consequence of war, or any of those other vicissi- 

 tudes by which places become depopulated, suspend 

 his cultivation even for a few years, and therefore the 

 fossil bones are not so numerous as those of some 

 other places ; but still there are bones of those 

 animals, of much larger species than any now met 

 with alive to be found in caves, and other accumula- 



tions of animal remains, both in the middle latitude of 

 the continent and Great Britain. But still it is as 

 living animals that this genus belongs to popular 

 natural history. 



It is worthy of remark, that as birds of prey form 

 the best defined natural group of the feathered tribes, 

 so the genus fells, which to them, in as far as 

 there can be a correspondence between birds and 

 mammalia, in being the best defined natural group in 

 the whole class. There is this further in common 

 that, though many of the species are readily enough 

 distinguished from each other, yet there are many in 

 which no specific distinction can be clearly esta- 

 blished, just in the same manner, and nearly to the 

 same extent, as this difficulty occurs in the birds of 

 prey. There is never the smallest difficulty in 

 deciding whether an animal do<js or does not belong 

 to the cat family ; but there are many instances in 

 which it is not easy to refer to the proper branch of 

 the family to which the individual belongs. This 

 confusion of species seems to be inseparably con- 

 nected with that well-defined general character which 

 marks the genus or the group ; and though at first 

 sight this may appear to be a difficulty in the study 

 of those animals, it is a difficulty only to the system- 

 atist ; for to the popular naturalist, who seeks a 

 knowledge of the animals themselves, and not of the 

 mere arrangement of them, it a great advantage to be 

 able to include a number in one general description ; 

 and with the exception of size and colour, this can be 

 readily done in the genus fells. 



The generic characters are : six incisive teeth in 

 each jaw ; two strong canines in each, conical, slightly 

 bent, very sharp pointed, those in the upper jaw the 

 largest, and locking behind and partly outside those in 

 the under. Three cheek teeth in the upper jaw 

 arranged in a row, with trenchant carnivorous edges ; 

 three similar ones in each side of the lower jaw ; and 

 in the upper jaw, within side the cheek teeth, a tooth 

 standing cross-wise with a flat or blunt top against 

 which the point of the carnivorous tooth of the lower 

 jaw acts much in the same manner as a butcher's 

 cleaver acts in dividing flesh on his block. The 

 tongue is beset with bony prickles, reflected back- 

 wards in the form of hooks, so that in drawing back- 

 wards across a substance, and pressing it at the same 

 time, it abrades like a file. 



Such are the general characters of the mouth 

 in all the animals of this genus, and here we have 

 another remarkable coincidence between them and the 

 birds of prey. This mouth is not a proper instrument 

 of prehension, as neither is the beak of rapacious 

 birds. Each group is furnished with other instruments 

 of prehension ; and though the cats generally seize 

 with the mouth at the same time that they seize with 

 the claws or strike down by the blow of the paws ; 

 yet their mouth is a tearing instrument ; and they do 

 not snap with it, even at the smallest prey, as is the 

 case with most carnivorous animals which have not 

 prehensile claws. The mouth is, however, very power- 

 ful as an instrument of adhesion ; and the structure 

 both of the teeth and tongue is calculated to produce 

 very destructive and painful laceration in every 

 animal upon which they can fasten, if the skin is not 

 tough and hard enough to resist their bite. This 

 latter is the case with some of the Pachydermata, such 

 as the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the hippotamus, 

 especially the two latter, and even with some of the 

 buffalo tribe, which are consequently not attacked by 



