40 
ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. 
with their whole Body, and make a quick dispatch. 
Therefore they go very quiet and silent to their prey; 
and . if their young ones chance to make a noise, they 
chastise them with their fists, but if they find the coast 
clear, then every one hath a different noise to express 
his joy. Nor could there be any way to hinder them 
from further multiplying, but that they fall sometimes 
into the ruder hands of the wild beasts, which they 
have no way to avoid but by a timely flight, or by 
creeping into the clefts of the rocks. If they find no 
safety in flight they make a vertue of necessity, stand 
their ground, and filling their paws full of dust or sand, 
fling it full in the eyes of their assailant, and then to 
their heels again." 
Of this marvellous history, the materials of which 
appear to have been furnished to our author by a 
native Abyssinian named Gregory, the reader is at full 
liberty to take or reject as much as he pleases. Later 
and more scientific writers, from the time of Buffon 
downwards, have concurred in describing the few iso- 
lated individuals which have fallen under their obser- 
vation as peculiarly gentle, good-tempered, playful, and 
affectionate ; and M. Frederic Cuvier in particular has 
given a most flattering account of the good qualities 
of one which remained for a considerable time in the 
Paris Menagerie, where its amiable disposition was 
developed under his own immediate inspection, and 
was in no degree impaired by age. The individual, 
however, which is now in the Society's Collection, and 
which is shown by the size and strength of its teeth to 
be fully grown, is by no means deserving of so good a 
character, and exhibits occasionally a temper as capri- 
cious and as savage as is possessed by almost any of 
the tribe. 
