10 WILD ANIMALS. 



CHAPTER II. 



CATS-GENUS FULIDJU. 



In the Zoological Society's Gardens are to be found a large number 

 of specimens of the fourjclasses of vertebrated animals^mammals, 

 birds, reptiles, and fishes,— but our attention will be devoted only 

 to the most important members of that class which are the 

 highest in organization, and known as mammals, so called because 

 they possess a set of organs that secrete milk by which their young 

 are nourished. Under the order of mammals, some two thousand 

 animals are specified — from man, monkeys, cats, dogs, horses, 

 &c., down to the sloth, the last on the list ; also bats that fly, and 

 whales and their allies inhabiting the seas. 



The cats — FelidoB — are the most powerful and ferocious of all 

 predatory animals, and the majority of the visitors to any 

 zoological collection naturally turn first towards the house in 

 which the specimens of these creatures are to be found. The 

 tribe of cats have been divided by some writers into fifty or more 

 differeiit species, but in reality many of them are only varieties 

 slightly distinguishable in habits, colour, or size, and cannot in con- 

 sequence be described as distinct species, any more than similar 

 differences in men can be said to constitute any such division. 

 We shall only have 'occasion to notice certain varieties of these 

 terrible creatures, such as lions, tigers, leopards or panthers, 

 jaguars, pumas, and the cheetah or hunting leopard. Oats belong 

 to the flesh-eating order of animals, and are armed with the most 

 perfect development of the carnivorous type of dentition. " Their 

 functions being to seize and hold struggling animals, often of 

 great power, they are provided with formidable fangs and cutting 



