12 WILD ANIMALS. 



enabling them to aroid all contact with obstacles that would emit 

 a sound, thus they draw nearer and nearer until they make that 

 terrible spring which is the mode of their attack, and appears to 

 exhaust their energy. 



They seem to possess but little sense of smell, and their hearing 

 faculties are not very highly developed, but their vision is 

 keen and penetrating. Their eyes are adapted for the night as 

 well as for the day — being, however, peculiarly constructed for 

 nocturnal use, the Felidm rather dislike strong sunlight. Their eyes 

 in certain lights glow like balls of fire. It is thus explained. In 

 several species of animals, the inner surface of the back of the 

 eye presents a membrane called tapetum lucidum, which in the 

 cat tribe is of a yellow colour and of a brilliant metallic lustre 

 like a concave mirror ; it is the reflection from this which causes 

 the " glare of the eye " which so many hunters of the lion and 

 tiger describe as being so terribly startling and indicative of the 

 furious anger of the animal, when frequently it is nothing of the 

 sort. Mr. Power describing his examination of a cat's eye with 

 the ophthalmoscope, pronounces it the most beautiful thing he had 

 ever seen. " Imagine a dense yet luminous velvety blackness below, 

 bounded by a nearly horizontal line, just above which is a pearly 

 spot : the entrance of the optic nerve. This presents the usual 

 vessels emerging from it. The disc is surrounded by a sapphire-blue 

 zone of intense brilliancy, passing into metallic-green ; and beyond 

 this the tapetum shines out with glorious colours of pink and gold, 

 with a shimmer of blue and of green. It is really lovely." 



The intellectual position of the cats in the order of animals is 

 an inferior one, and it is fortunate it is so, or their power for 

 mischief and for evil would be greatly increased, and would make 

 them more fearfully dreaded than they now are by the natives in 

 the, countries where they abound. 



With the exception of the lion and one or two others of the 

 tribe, they have the power of climbing trees. They are not as a 

 rule gregarious, but seem to prefer hunting singly, and only 

 occasionally in pairs or families. In both continents certain 

 varieties are found, but apparently there are none in Australia. 

 The larger species are more numerous in tropical countries. 



