II2 ZOOLOGICAL SKETCHES. 



that day. At the entrance of the Loch the boys had 

 piled up a large heap of brushwood, and upon our 

 arrival the pile was lighted, merely to please the stran- 

 gers. The presumptive tenant of the cave might be 

 a badger or a Feldkatee t i.e., a domestic tom-cat run 

 wild, said the Forster, who had taken a seat on a tree- 

 stump, but certainly not a lynx, whose short legs oblige 

 him to secure his prey by a downward spring, and whose 

 favorite haunts, therefore, are leafy trees overhanging a 

 spring or a salt-lick. 



But, while the professor lectured, the flames rose 

 higher and higher, and in the midst of a dissertation 

 on the habits of the Transylvanian lynx the lecturer 

 was interrupted by a fat specimen of the indigenous 

 variety bouncing from the cave and away through the 

 bush, taking him so completely by surprise that he 

 stared after the phenomenon in mute bewilderment, and 

 even kept his seat on the tree-stump. When the fugitive 

 had got a start of some eighty or ninety yards, the 

 Forster stood up and fired both barrels after it, two well- 

 aimed shots, for the lynx broke down, rather against my 

 expectation, though the marksman only wondered that 

 it got up again and continued its flight. But this was to 

 be a day of surprises : the smoke of the second shot had 

 not yet cleared off when two more lynxes bounced from 

 the cave, and, rushing through the underbrush, followed 

 their predecessor with superfluous haste. 



" You give in ?" inquired the surveyor. 



