40 
most other animals with a rupture of blood-vessels, 
muscles, and tendons, and fracture of bones. As a 
ball of glass thrown on a pavement is splintered in 
pieces, while a ball of India rubber bounds away 
uninjured, so the elastic soles of the feet of the lion 
and leopard, &c. sustain them in safety where the 
legs of a horse or even of a dog would have been 
broken’. The flexibility of the vertebral column is 
also suited particularly to the action of these ani- 
mals: a rupture of the brachial artery would attend 
such exertion of the fore limbs in other quadrupeds’, 
in these it is protected by a peculiar passage through 
the os humeri. The bones of the lion, and of the 
cat kind in general, are harder than those of other 
animals. But the prominent character of their feet 
is to be found in the retractile, arched, and pointed 
talons*. As the tremendously armed foot of the 
lion, when compared with that of the camel, the 
elephant, or the hyrax; such is the five-taloned foot 
of the eagle compared with the bisulcate pad of the 
4 See Library of Entertaining Knowledge, vol. i. part i. p. 173, 
where the foot of the lion is ingeniously compared with that of 
the gryllus salticus, and of the acryolium biguttulum. 
* But Bingley observes of the chamois, ‘“ They throw them- 
selves from a rock of nearly thirty feet perpendicular height, and 
continue so to descend till they reach a proper resting place. 
The spring of their tendons is so great, that when leaping about 
among the precipices one would almost imagine they possessed 
wings instead of legs.” 
’ The cheta, or hunting leopard, felis jubata, is said to differ 
from all of the cat or tiger kind, in having claws very slightly if 
at all retractile. Its habit in pursuing its prey also differs pro- 
portionally from that of other leopards. 
. 
