32 WILD CATS OF AMERICA. 



seeks the covert afforded by some projecting rock, in a 

 district frequented by stags or the smaller mammals, and 

 tolerably well wooded. There he waits patiently for the 

 passing deer, whose habits he seems to know by instinct, 

 or for the turkeys which scrape and scratch at the foot of 

 the trees, or the hares whose burrow^s honeycomb the sandy 

 soil; never missing a favourable opportunity, and, with 

 the swiftness and directness of an arrow, springing on his 

 prey. 



Wild Cats are still very numerous in the Southern States 

 of America ; at least in Louisiana and North and South 

 Carolina. They find breeding-places and feeding-grounds 

 among the marshes and the marshy brushwood w^hich cover 

 the banks of the Mississippi, and the thick forests so fre- 

 quently flooded by the waters of its tributaries. 



It is said that the Americans regard the hunt of these 

 predatory animals as one of the liveliest of their national 

 sports. What a fox-hunt is to an English squire, that, 

 and even more, is a wild cat-hunt to the Southern planter. 

 The character given to it by the negroes is certainly not 

 undeserved : — A vermin as voracious as a pawnbroker, as 

 stingy as a briefless lawyer, as wild as a peccary, and as 

 insensible to pain as a Southern planter or a turtle. 

 Finally, they say, it is like a woman, because you cannot 

 compare it with any other than itself ! 



M. E-evoil says that, on first examining the head of a 

 wild cat, he was much struck by its close resemblance to 

 that of a rattlesnake ; it had the same cruel expression, the 

 same jaws, the same structure of the teeth. He made this 



