GENERAL REMARKS ON THE LAND CARNIVORA. 3 



so the end of this biological " house that Jack built " is that to ensure a good crop of clover it is 

 a.lvisable to have plenty of Cats about ! 



The conception of the fearful struggle for existence going on between beast and beast has been 



caught by Shakspere in a wonderful passage in his " Timon of Athens." Apemantus would " give 



the world to the beasts to be rid of the men," whereupon Timon asks him whether he would have 



himself " fall in the confusion of men, and remain a beast with the beasts." Apemantus answers in 



the affirmative, and Timon's rejoinder is as follows : " A beastly ambition, which the gods grant 



thee to attain to ! If thou wert the Lion, the Fox would beguile thee : if thou wert the Lamb, 



the Fox would eat thee : if thou wert the Fox, the Lion would suspect thee, when, peradventure, thou 



wert accused by the Ass : if thou wert the Ass, thy dulness would torment thee, and still thou 



livedst but as a breakfast to the Wolf : if thou wert the Wolf, thy greediness would afflict thee, and oft 



thou shouldst hazard thy life for thy dinner : wert thou the Unicorn, pride and wrath would confound 



thee, and make thine own self the conquest of thy fury : wert thou a Bear, thou wouldst be killed by 



the Horse : wert thou a Horse, thou wouldst be seized by the Leopard : wert thou a Leopard, thou wert 



german to the Lion, and the spots of thy kindred were jurors on thy life : all thy safety were remotion, 



and thy defence, absence." To learn the truth of these words, one has only to turn to any book of travel 



in Africa or India, where one is certain to read of a wholesale destruction which it is melancholy to think of. 



In Great Britain this conflict is a thing of the past ; but two terrible enemies of man even there 



have been extirpated within the historic period namely, the Wolf and the Bear ; of these and of 



their extirpation we shall speak when we come to describe those types. Now, happily, these greedy 



Carnivora are " scattered and peeled meted out and trodden down." Far in the north of the island 



there is the wild Cat , the two Martens are becoming scarcer and scarcer ; the Badger is found here 



and there ; the Polecat is rare ; so that the Fox, the Stoat, and the Weasel the last being the very 



least and meanest of the order alone are common. 



But in the later geological epoch pre-historic as to us the nobler types abounded, and Great 

 Britain was then as much the land of savage beasts as Africa and India are now. 



The Carnivora are found all over the world, from the equator to the poles : in most parts of the 

 globe they are abundant, the great exception being the Australian region of zoological geography, 

 namely, the immense island of Australia, which can only boast of a Dog, doubtfully native, and New 

 Zealand and the adjacent Polynesian Islands, which are quite devoid of members of the group, the 

 native Bog of New Zealand having probably been recently introduced. 



Many forms have become extinct, and, as we shall see when we come to speak of these bygone 

 creatures, the lower we dig in the strata which compose the rocks of which our earth is made, the 

 lower do the types become, that is to say, among the extinct Carnivora we have no animals so perfectly 

 constructed for flesh-eating as the Cat family, for instance, but the various kinds get nearer and nearer, 

 the lower we go, to what may be called the general plan of Mammalian structure, and farther and 

 farther from the special type of structure found in the higher Carnivores of the present day. 



There is considerable range of size among the various members of the group, the Lion and Tiger 

 being the largest, the Weasel and Suricate the smallest. As to their habits, the Carnivora are very 

 varied ; leaving out as we do for the present the fin-footed Seals, Sea Bears, and Walruses, we yet have 

 the semi-aquatic Otter and the Enhydra, or Sea Otter, both at home in the watery element, and most 

 expert swimmers and divers ; but for the most part the flesh-eaters are inhabitants of the copse, the 

 jungle, and the forest. Many are nimble climbers, some are arboreal in their habits, living entirely 

 in trees, and most are crepuscular, that is, hunt their prey after dusk. 



As to their diet, we mentioned above that they are by no means all flesh-eaters ; in fact there is 

 ^very gradation from those which live exclusively on animal food, such as the Lion, Tiger, &c., to the 

 purely herbivorous kinds of Bear. Some again, such as the Cat family, seem to prefer flesh-meat, others, 

 such as the Otter, adopt a Lenten diet, and feed on fish or eggs. This matter, however, is, of course, 

 largely determined by the habitat of the animal, those whose habitation is inland being compelled 

 to devour land animals, while those living by the sea or by river-banks usually take to fish either 

 occasionally or as a regular thing. 



Turning to the structure of the group, one of the first things that strikes us is the looseness of 

 their skin, which, instead of being stretched on the body as tightly as a drum parchment, as it is in 



