52 The Poets Beasts. 



" Now with a lynx-eye 

 I see, looking into future time," 



says Cowper's Adam. From this reputed keenness of sight, 

 "lynx" comes to signify a cruel eagerness in detection, as 

 of officers of the Inquisition ; and Keats, by a curious form 

 of what may be called metastasis, make the eyes which 

 can see far be themselves seen from a distance — 



" As deep into the wood as we 

 Might mark a lynx's eye." 



He does not, of course, mean a long distance, but the 

 transference is worth nothing. 



Mrs. Hemans, referring to the Piedmontese variety, has 

 the armed Jager pursuing it 



" Above the clouds of morn ; " 



and there is probably no length to which the hunter, if he 

 saw any chance of bagging it, would not follow such a 

 quarry, for the lynx wears a very valuable and beautiful fur 

 — said to be worth three times as much as the sable's — and 

 is moreover a beast well worth the hunting if only for its 

 endurance and courage. It is still to be found in Scandi- 

 navia, the greater part of Central Europe, and, of course, in 

 Russia, and as one of the three beasts of prey worth calling 

 such — the other two being the bear and the wolf — deserves 

 to be considered really notable. 



But it is not, as is supposed, " untamable." The Gaek- 

 war of Baroda has a regular pack of trained lynxes, for 

 stalking and hunting pea-fowl and other kinds of birds. I 

 have myself seen a tame lynx that had been taught to catch 

 crows — no simple feat — and its strategy was as diverting as 

 its agility amazing. It would lie down with the end of a 

 string in its mouth, the other end being fast to a stake, and 

 pretend to be asleep, dead asleep, drunk, chloroformed, 



