THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
ing him and keeping him awake. His head is made to face the village 
street, and for an hour at a time, several times a day, his keepers make 
pretended rushes at him and wave cloths, staves, and other articles in his 
face. He is talked to continually, and women’s tongues are believed to be 
the most effective antisoporifics. No created being could resist the effects 
of hunger, want of sleep, and feminine scolding, and the poor cheeta be- 
comes piteously, abjectly tame... Of actual training in the field there is 
little or none. So it is not wonderful that the cheeta loses its natural 
dash and is often left behind by the antelope. At the wedding festivities 
of a Punjab chief the other day, the guests were shown, this sport, and the 
cheeta caught and killed a blackbuck; but it was found the Raja’s ser- 
vants, by way of making quite sure, had first hamstrung the poor antelope. 
“The ordained procedure is that the hooded leopard is first taken afield 
on a cart driven near a herd of blackbuck, shown the game, and slipped. 
In a few bounds he reaches and seizes it, is rewarded with a draught of 
blood, or a morsel of liver in a wooden spoon, and put on his cart again; 
but there is a large proportion of failures. And the creature is not prac- 
ticing a feat he has been taught, but is merely let loose to perform an act he 
learned in his wild state which his keepers cannot teach, and for which, 
in fact, their teaching seems to unfit him.” 
Civet Cats, Mungooses, and Meerkats 
Among the earliest carnivorous mammals ‘viverrine” 
characteristics of structure prevailed, — that is, such features 
as now mark the small, flesh-eating animals which we know 
as civet cats, and place in the family Viverride. As early as 
the Oligocene period these characteristics became distinctly 
developed in certain forms, and even the typical genus, Viverra, 
may be traced back to that era. One of the most ancient of 
the vivcrrine lines survives in the foussa, which stands inter- 
mediate between the cats and the civets, having thirty-six teeth, 
of which the hinder ones are very catlike, retractile sheathed 
claws, and other feline peculiarities. It is confined to Mada- 
gascar, where it is the largest beast of prey, not common, and 
very imperfectly known except as a scourge to herds of goats 
and kids. Large specimens nearly equal our puma in size, 
150 
