Jenyns 1 Natural History. 1851 



Action of Quadrupeds in ivalking, fyc. — " The horse, in trotting or walking, lifts 

 his feet off the ground in a certain order : first he raises the off fore, then the near 

 hind, then the near fore, and lastly the off hind. The appearance, as is well known, 

 is that of the two legs which are diagonally opposite being raised nearly simultaneously; 

 but the two on the same side following one another at a moderate interval, the hind 

 one advancing first. The elephant, as many observers have noticed, appears, in walk- 

 ing, to move the two legs on the same side at the same time ; and it has occasionally 

 been thought that the order in which the legs are raised from the ground is different 

 from that in the horse. But, upon close watching, it will be seen that this order is in 

 all cases the same ; the only difference consisting in the length of the intervals be- 

 tween taking the feet successively up. In the elephant, the interval between raising 

 each hind-foot and the fore immediately in advance of it is very short, and it becomes 

 relatively shorter as the pace increases. When the animal walks very slowly, the legs 

 appear to move just as in the horse ; the interval in the two cases being the same. 

 The same may be observed in the rhinoceros, though I have had no opportunity of 

 noticing this animal moving fast, so as to say whether it then resembles the elephant 

 in the appearance of the legs or not. The giraffe, whether it walks fast or leisurely, 

 appears to move the two legs on the same side together, as in the elephant. It is ob- 

 servable, that both the giraffe and the elephant have short bodies (the former 

 especially) in respect of their height and length of leg. Whether this has anything 

 to do in lessening the interval above spoken of, I am not prepared to say ; but 

 I thought I observed, when the rhinoceros was walking slowly, in which animal the 

 body is rather long in comparison of the legs, that this interval was also longer than 

 in the horse, as it is shorter in the two animals just mentioned." — p. 49. 



Different Taste for Food in Cats. — " Happening, on one occasion, to throw a dead 

 long-eared bat to a cat, the latter was observed to seize it with the greatest avidity, at 

 the same time uttering a kind of savage growl (as cats often do when they capture a 

 favourite prey) ; and presently retiring with it to a corner, soon devoured it entire, not 

 rejecting even the flying membranes. This was a well-fed, parlour cat, and appa- 

 rently not suffering particularly from hunger. On repeating the experiment with 

 another cat, this last took not the least notice of the bat whatever, though repeatedly 

 placed in its way. This shows how different individuals of the same species will oc- 

 casionally differ in respect of food ; and how little importance is to be attached to the 

 fact of any particular food being selected by an animal in a single instance. Thus I 

 have seen, in some botanical books, mention made, in the case of certain plants, that 

 "a horse ate it,'' or " a cow refused it"; when perhaps, on a second trial, another horse 

 would have refused it, and another cow have eaten it." — p. 54. 



Habits of the Hedge-hog* — " Oct. 28th, 1828. — Hedge-hogs are still about, and on 

 the alert for food. I fell in with one to-day in my walks, in a sheltered part of the 

 garden, which I was enabled to watch unobserved, and which afforded me an oppor- 

 tunity of seeing a little into their habits and mode of feeding. It was creeping up 

 and down a grass walk, apparently in busy search for worms. It carried its snout 

 very low, insinuating it among the roots of the herbage, and snuffing about under the 

 dead leaves which lay about. After a time, it commenced scratching at a particular 



* Erinaceus europaus, Linn. 



