26 THE TOWER MENAGERIE. 
organ, and giving to it a black tip of greater or less 
extent. The under parts of his body and the inner sides 
of his legs are almost entirely white; he has no mane; 
and his whole frame, though less elevated than that of 
the Lion, is of a slenderer and more graceful make. His 
head is also shorter and more rounded. 
Almost in the same degree that the Lion has been 
exalted and magnified, at the expense of his fellow 
brutes, has the Tiger been degraded and depressed below 
his just and natural level. While the one has been held 
up to admiration, as the type and standard of heroic 
perfection, the other has, with equal capriciousness of 
judgment and disregard of the close and intimate rela- 
tionship subsisting between them, been looked upon by 
mankind in general with those feelings of unmingled 
horror and detestation which his character for untame- 
able ferocity and insatiable thirst of blood was so well 
calculated to inspire. It requires, however, but little 
consideration to teach us that the broad distinction, 
which has thus been drawn, cannot by possibility exist ; 
and the recorded observations of naturalists and travel- 
lers, both at home and abroad, will be found amply 
sufficient to prove that the difference in their characters 
and habits, on which so much stress has been laid, is in 
reality as slight and unessential as that which exists in 
their corporeal structure. 
Unquestionably the Tiger has not the majesty of the 
Lion; for he is destitute of the mane, in which that 
majesty chiefly resides. Neither has he the same calm 
and dignified air of imperturbable gravity which is at 
once so striking and so prepossessing in the aspect of 
the Lion. But, on the other hand, it will readily be 
