214 THE CAT TRIBE. 



return, and retire to their dens to sleep off the effects of their 

 gluttonous meal; not again to awake until their renovated 

 appetite stimulates to a repetition of the murderous scene. 

 Even their amours are accompanied with a degree of savage 

 barbarity ; and the female is not uiifrequently called upon to 

 protect their mutual offspring from the ravenous jaws of her 

 male companion. Next to their ferocity, the leading feature 

 in the moral character of all the species is suspicion. It is 

 this which imparts, even to the largest and most powerful, a 

 wily and malignant air, but ill assorting with their gigantic 

 size and immense muscular power. Of this feeling they can 

 never be entirely divested ; it is sufficiently remarkable even 

 in the domesticated race ; but becomes still more obvious in 

 those which are kept in a state of confinement, and which, 

 however well they may appear reconciled to their condition, 

 and how much soever they may seem attached to their keepers, 

 are startled by the slightest unusual occurrence, and become 

 restless, uneasy, and mistrustful, whenever any change, however 

 trifling, takes place in the objects by which they are sur- 

 rounded. 



THE LION. (Fells Leo, Linn.) 



The lion, the strongest of all beasts of prey, is distinguished 

 from its congeners by its uniform tawny colour, the tufts of hair 

 at the end of the tail, and the flowing mane which decorates the 

 head, neck, and shoulders of the male, and also by the head 

 being more square. 



His true country is Africa, in the vast and untrodden wilds 

 of which, from the immense deserts of the north to the trackless 

 forests of the south, he reigns supreme and uncontrolled. In 

 the sandy deserts of Arabia, in some of the wilder districts of 

 Persia, and in the vast jungles of Hindostan, he still maintains a 

 precarious footing : but from the classic soil of Greece, as well 

 as from the whole of Asia Minor, both of which were once 

 exposed to his ravages, he has been utterly dislodged and extir- 



