112 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 Feldkatze, — 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. 



