THE LION. 



Generic Characters. 

 Six cutting and two canine teeth, and fix grinders in each jaw (a). 

 Five toes before ; four behind. 



Sharp hooked claws, lodged in a iheath(B), capable of extenlion or 



retraction at pleafure. 

 Head round, vifage fliort, tongue rough. 



(a) The members of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, who difiected two Lions, give the 

 following account of the teeth, which is fomewhat different. " It had fourteen teeth in each jaw, viz. foul 

 incifores, four canini, and fix molares. The incifores were little, and the canini very uneven, having two great 

 and two fmall ones. The great ones, which were an inch and an half long, are thofe which Ariftotle calls 

 canini : but each of thefe was accompanied with another little one, which was at the fide of the incifores, and 

 which left in the upper jaw, between it and the great one, as much void fpace on each fide, as was neceflary to 

 lodge and infert the hook of the great caninus of the inferior jaw, in which there was likewife a fpace 

 between the great caninus and the firft of the molares, defigned to lodge the great caninus of the upper jaw, 

 but which was much larger, to the end the lower jaw might be advanced forward occafionally." — Memoirs Royal 

 Acad. Scien. Paris, p. 4. We have carefully examined the mouth of a Lion, now in the Tower, and find the 

 account given by the gentlemen of the Royal Academy is founded' on fact. The fame conformation is 

 likewife obfervable in the teeth of the Leopard. 



(b) The fame accurate anatomifts give the following curious account of the claws, which we cannot 

 refift the temptation of inferting. " The claws had no cafes, as Pliny reports they have, to keep them from 

 being dulled by walking ; but it appears rather, that thefe animals, as Plutarch and Solinus obferve, provided 

 for that, by retracting them between their toes, by means of the particular articulation of the laft joint, 

 which was fuch, that the laft bone, fave one, by bending itfelf outwards, gives place to the laff, which is 

 articulated to it, and to which the claw is fattened, to bend itfelf upwards and fideways, more eafily than 

 downwards being drawn upwards, by means of a tendinous ligament, which faftens together the two laft 

 bones in their fuperior and external part only ; and which, fuffering a violent diftention, when the toe is 

 bent inwards, extends this laft articulation, as foon as the flexor mufcles come to flacken, and ftrengthens the 

 action of the exterior mufcles ; fo that the bone, which is at the end of every toe, being almoft continually 

 bent upwards, it is not the end of the toes which refts upon the ground, but the node of the articulation of 



