The Tiger. 255 



animals they export by means of pits, which are con- 

 structed after the manner of those oubliettes or " dungeons 

 of the forgotten," where in the good old times captives 

 were placed who had no hope of release. 



What is the tiger's temper? Conventionally, and 

 according to common misapprehension, he is the furious 

 and insatiable savage that Buffon paints — " sa ferociti n' est 

 comparable d rien." He is full of base wickedness and inap- 

 peasable cruelty, loves blood and carnage for their own 

 sake, and longs continually to fly at unfortunate creatures 

 with that tremendm velocitatis of which Pliny speaks. 



" What immortal hand or eye. 

 Framed thy matchless symmetry? 

 In what distant deeps or skies, 

 Burned that fire within thine eyes?" 



writes William Blake, and then he asks, "Did He who 

 made the lamb make thee .' " The French naturalist 

 and English poet looked at the subject from the same 

 standpoint. It was not necessarily seen wrongly on that 

 account, but it happened that the view taken by both was 

 an imperfect one. Deeper insight or more profound 

 research would have resolved uncertainty in the one case, 

 and checked extravagance in the other. Had they read 

 the runes of nature aright, the answer to such questionings, 

 the rebuke to such exaggerations, would have been found 

 stamped upon the organization of everything that lives. 

 Physical constitution is never an accident or a mistake ; 

 it is at once the consequence of special modes of existence, 

 and the cause of their continuance. Bodily conformation 



