CHAPTER VI. 
CARNIVORA— THEIR HABITS, POWER OF VISION AT NIGHT, AND PE- 
CULIARITIES OF THEIR FEET AND WHISKERS.— THE COUGAR, OR 
PUMA— DESCRIPTION— EARLY RECORD OF— COUGAR KILLED AT 
SOREL— XNECDOTE OF ITS STRENGTH AND FEROCITY .—THE LYNX 
AND WILD CAT— DESCRIPTION— DOMESTIC PUSS. 
We next come to the Feline family of the Carnivora — the 
Cat tribe, — of which it will be well to say something before 
enumerating their species. In it are comprised the most 
ferocious and bloodthisty of the Mammalia. They hunt chiefly 
by night, and are exceedingly cunning in the means by which 
they entrap their victims Their power of seeing in the dark 
has always been a mystery, nor is it strange that it should 
be so, since man of all animals has the least nocturnal power 
of vision. 
In all night-prowling animals the eye is peculiarly large, 
so as to admit a great number of the rays of light, for it is 
seldom or never perfectly dark in the open air. It was sup 
posed formely that the eyes of cats and owls generated light, 
their structure being such as to produce a phosphorescence 
by which objects became visible in the dark ! Recent expe- 
riments however show, that their extra power of vision is 
produced by the concentration of the rays of light by the eye 
of the animal, and that when it is totally dark the eyes of 
a cat cannot be seen. This faculty then depends on such a 
structure of the eye, as enables it to collect the scattered rays 
of light in greater quantities than that of other animals.. 
In the foot of the cat tribe, the marks of the wisdom of 
the Creator’s design to perform the very purposes for which 
we see they are employed, are particularly apparent. The 
power of these animals, so to balance themselves when leaping 
