CARNIVORA.' 
13 
Major C. Hamilton Smith has favoured me with his 
observations on this subject. He states, that the disk- 
ous or circular eye-pupil is believed to be diurnal, and 
the lion and tiger are both, in general, associated to- 
gether on this account; but the lion, although he sees 
by day, may be said, probably, never to hunt his prey 
while the Sun is above the horizon, unless pressed in 
an extraordinary degree. The pupil of his eye is 
also at all times circular, and always of a yellowish 
colour. The tiger, on the contrary, will seek his 
prey by day and by night; and his eye-pupil is 
capable of either shape, and in the twilight or dark 
its colour is like a blue-green flame. This remark 
he made while drawing a specimen of a large Bengal 
tiger at New York. The roorh of the menagerie in 
which it was placed was generally rather dark, and 
at the time was rendered more so by the gloominess * 
of the weather. The animal was exceedingly vicious, 
endeavouring, occasionally, to strike his keeper ; yet 
he lay in a stately, and, seemingly, unconcerned 
attitude, with the cleft pupils of his eyes fixed upon 
the major while drawing : but if a person passed near 
him they were changed instantly into a disk, and 
their colour altered from yellow-green to blue-green. 
To this facility of expansion and contraction of the 
pupils, which, in this instance, resulted from a men- 
tal excitement, and not from any alteration in the 
degree of light, may be attributed the diurnal habits 
of the tiger, as also his disregard of night-fires; 
while the lion, the eyes of which are not calculated 
