CARNIVOROUS QUADRUPEDS. 



and carnivorous habits. They walk on their toes : yet not so much from that habitual stealthiness 

 of pace, by which they advance unperceived till within a spring of their prey ; as because it is also 

 the means of that celerity of motion which is necessary to the very existence of animals that can 

 fleed only on flesh. 



Their claws are exceedingly powerful ; and they are enabled to draw them up into sheaths 

 between their toes, so as to prevent their points from touching- the ground ; whence they are 

 called retractile ; and those claws are, in consequence, always kept sharp, unworn, and ready for 

 active service. 



The eyes of the Feline tribe of every face in nature a striking- and important feature vary 

 in the different species, and are capable of much alteration in the same animal ; as instinctive 

 impulse, or internal emotion, changes the expression of his countenance ; and also from the 

 degrees of light which act upon their pupils. Of Lions the pupils of the eyes are circular, and 

 not of a yellow colour, as has been stated in the most diffuse modern dissertations on the 

 Caraivora, but black. It is the iris of the Lion's eye that is yellow. They appear to be best 

 suited to nocturnal, or twilight, vision ; and hence the Lion rarely hunts his prey while the sun 

 is above the horizon perhaps never, but when pressed by hunger in an extraordinary degree. 

 The Tiger, on the contrary, will seek his prey by day as well as by night ; and during twilight the 

 colour of his eyes is that of a blue-green flame. If a stranger passes near a Tiger in a menagerie, 

 the colour of the animal's eyes will sometimes alter suddenly, from yellow-green to blue-green ; 

 not from any alteration in the degree of light acting upon them, but from mental excitement, and 

 from a certain natural facility of expansion and contraction of the eye-pupils. 



Hence a characteristic difference betwee n the Lion and the Tiger. The habits of the latter 

 are diurnal, and he disregards night-fires : the Lion, on the contrary, whose eyes are not calculated 

 for the glare of day, cannot bear to encounter fire-light at night. Yet these physical conforma- 

 tions are sometimes overcome by the rage of hunger ; and hence, in MR. EDWIN LANDSEER'S 

 contending group, the Lion is represented as attacking the Tiger although it be day. 



MR. BELL treats learnedly, and we believe with .much originality, of the facial-muscles of 

 this class of quadrupeds, in his " Anatomy of Expression." We shall offer a few extracts, by 

 which the reader will perceive how limited are their powers of expression of countenance, when 

 compared with those of human nature, notwithstanding their superiority over all other quadrupeds. 

 " The violent passions mark themselves so distinctly on the countenances both of men and 

 of animals, that we are apt in the first instance to consider the movements by which they are 

 indicated, as certain signs or characters provided by Nature, for the express purpose of intimating 

 the internal emotion ; and to suppose that they are interpreted by the observer in consequence of a 

 peculiar and instinctive faculty. This view of things, however, so natural at first sight, is not 

 altogether satisfactory to philosophy j and a more jealous observation of the facts, seems to suggest 



