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第2章 天命之劫

The variety figured over leaf is in one of the many intermediate stages between unreclaimed barbarism and complete domestication. It is an awkward looking creature, high on the legs, narrow in the loins, and covered with a rough and shaggy coat. The back and sides are nearly black; the shoulders reddish brown; and the posterior part of the body, the haunches, the hind legs, and the tail, white; as are also the ears, which are rather large, the nose, and a spot over each eye. The horns, although the specimen is a male, are remarkably small, and enclose the ears within their curve. If the ears are freed from their confinement, the animal becomes very uneasy, and never rests until he has succeeded in replacing them, which he cannot accomplish without considerable difficulty. He was presented to the Menagerie by Lord Liverpool about six years ago, and is extremely mild in his temper.

Felis Onca. Linn.

In the number and form of his teeth, in the asperity of his tongue, in the conformation of his organs of sense, and in the number of his claws, he accurately corresponds with the legitimate species of the genus Felis. The principal character in which he differs from them consists in the slight degree of retractility of these latter organs. Instead of being withdrawn within sheaths appropriated for the purpose, as in the whole of the cats properly so called, the claws of the Hunting Leopard are capable of only a very limited retraction within the skin, and are consequently exposed to the action of the ground on which they tread, their points and edges being thus rendered liable to be blunted by the constant pressure to which they are subjected, almost to the same extent as in the dogs. The slightest consideration of the uses to which the claws are applied by the whole of the feline tribe, in whom they are, in fact, in consequence[63] of their extreme power and sharpness, organs of offence if possible more dead

nd appearance they constantly exhibit the greatest similarity.

imself to be treated with the greatest familiarity by his keepers and those to whom he is accustomed.

uarter of a mile before he fell. There is no chance, they add, of killing him by a single shot, unless the ball goes directly through the brain; a single hunter runs consequently no little risk in venturing to attack an animal upon whom the most dangerous wounds, if not instantaneously fatal, produce no obvious immediate effects.

THE INDIAN BOA.

ody. This disproportion between the length of their tails affords perhaps the most striking distinction between the two animals, offering, as it does, a constant and never-failing criterion; whereas the difference in the marking of their furs, although sufficiently obvious on a close examination, depends almost entirely on such minute particularities as would probably escape the notice of a superficial observer, and were in fact for a long time so completely neglected, even by zoologists, that it is only within a few years that we have been again taught accurately to distinguish between them. These particularities we shall now proceed to point out.

Macropus Major. Shaw.