GARNI VORA 231 



afflicted with infectious diseases, may carry the diseases to others if 

 they are allowed to rove about. 



There are many other members of the Canidae in other parts of the 

 world, but the habits and economic relations of most of them probably 

 closely coincide with those of their nearest relatives in North America. 

 The jackals are said to be omnivorous, destructive to young goats and 

 the like, and are sometimes seen "greedily catching and devouring in- 

 sects." 58 In both Africa and Asia they sometimes haunt the outskirts 

 of towns and feed upon refuse, also eating fruit and such vegetables 

 as melons and pumpkins. 



FAMILY FELIDAE CATS ( LIONS, TIGERS, LYNXES, ETC.) 

 The Felidae are carnivorous, usually catching their prey alive ; some 

 of them are very destructive in proportion to their numbers. It is 

 fortunate for the human race that they are not more abundant. It is 

 a matter of common knowledge that lions, tigers and leopards are 

 dangerous to human beings, though it is generally agreed, among those 

 familiar with these great cats in a wild state, that only an occasional 

 individual acquires a taste for human blood and becomes a "man- 

 killer." Nevertheless, a wild carnivorous animal of such size and 

 strength is always potentially dangerous, and when one does acquire 

 the abnormal habit it may become a great scourge. Drake-Brockman 

 says he has known of "man-eating" leopards in only one locality, where 

 there are a number of graves of natives who were killed by two leop- 

 ards. 1 One killed seven boys, who were herding sheep, before it was 

 itself killed. 2 Two insatiable man-eating lions waged war on the con- 

 struction gang engaged in building an African railroad, stopped work 

 for three weeks and terrorized the community for nine months before 

 they were stopped, after they had killed 28 Indian coolies and scores of 

 African natives of whose death no official record was kept. 3 In one 

 year (1910) 882 persons in India were killed by tigers and 366 by 

 leopards, 4 and in 1895 m the same country 177 persons were killed 

 by tigers and 64 by panthers and leopards. 6 The total toll of human 

 lives taken by the big cats of Africa and Asia is large. 



The jaguar of Central and South America, largest of American cats, 



58 Drake-Brockman, The mammals of Somaliland, p. 46, 1910. 



1 Drake-Brockman, The mammals of Somaliland, p. 16, 1910. 



" Roosevelt, African game trails, p. 289, 1910. 



3 Patterson, The lions that stopped a railroad, World's Work, Nov. and Jan., 

 1908-09, pp. 10895-10909, 11147-11158. See also Patterson, The Man-eating lions of 

 Tsavo, Field Museum Nat. Hist. Zool. Leaflet, No. 7, 1925. 



* Science, xxxvii, 938, 1913. 



5 F.C.K., Amer. Naturalist, xxxi, 77-78, 1897. 



