MANNER OF ATTACK. 5 



If it be a hare, or other small animal, he destroys it 

 at once, and devours it bodily, or so much of it as his 

 necessities may need. But if it be a sheep, or the like, he 

 seizes it by the back with his terrific talons, and throwing 

 the poor creature to the ground, rends the throat, and 

 gorges himself with the warm blood as it gurgles from the 

 gaping wound. Afterwards he tears open the cavity of 

 the chest, and eats the parts most replete with blood 

 such as the heart, the liver, and the lungs ; and if these 

 should not suffice to stay his hunger, he feasts on the 

 flesh also. 



Should it be a larger animal, however, such as a deer 

 the lynx, according to a popular, though probably erroneous 

 notion, casts himself from some little eminence, from a 

 boulder, or a tree, on to his victim's neck, and then rends 

 open the arteries, the position of which he knows from 

 experience. And as when walking, his talons, in the same 

 way as those of the cat, are always in the sheath which 

 nature has provided, that they may be protected from wear 

 and injury, they are so sharp, that during this barbarous 

 operation they perform the part of lancets. 



It is said, that if the lynx fails in his spring, and his 

 intended victim saves itself by flight, he never pursues it any 

 considerable distance, but in like manner with others of the 

 feline tribe, slinks back to his retreat. 



" Some years ago," M. Ekstrom relates, " whilst a peasant 

 was occupied with agricultural labours in the spring, he 

 observed that some sheep feeding in a wooded pasture 

 shied, when passing near a boulder on the hill-side. 

 Inclination for the green sward, however, having at length 

 got the better of their fears, they once more approached 





