The Tower Menagerie

Onca

does not fall within our province to illustrate, occupy the colder and northern regions of both hemispheres. These belong principally to the same subdivision with the Lynx[42] (being, like him, distinguished by the pencils of long hairs which surmount their ears), and to that which comprehends the domestic cat; and are all of diminutive size and trifling power when compared with those monstrous productions of the torrid zone, the Lion, the Tiger, and the Leopard. Th

ry nearly in both respects to the Lionesses of the smaller breeds: he is, however, less elevated on his legs, and heavier and more clumsy in all his proportions. His head is larger and rounder than that of the Leopard; and his tail is considerably shorter in proportion, being only of sufficient length to allow of its touching the ground when the animal is standing, while that of the Leopard, as we have before observed, is very[43] nearly as long as his whole body. This disproportion between the length of their tails affords perhaps the most striking dist

that of the Leopard; we come now to the differences observable between them. The spots which occupy the central line of the back in the former are full, narrow, and elongated; and the roses of the sides and haunches, which are considerably larger and proportionally less numerous than in the Leopard, are all or nearly all marked with one or[44] sometimes two black dots or spots of smaller size towards their centre: an apparently trifling, but constant and very remarkable distinction, which exists in no other species. By this peculiarity alone the Jaguar may at once be recognised; and this external characteristic, together with the extreme shortness of his tail, his much greater size, his comparatively

ns of travellers. On the other hand he has erroneously figured the latter animal under the name of the Panther; a[45] mistake in which he has been followed by Pennant and others, and with which the writings of zoologists are more or less infected even up to the present day. What the Panther of the ancients actually was, or whether there exists any real difference between it and the Leopard, is a much disputed question, into which we have neither space nor inclination to enter: certain it is that it could not possibly have been the present animal,

onal observation; namely, that a Jaguar, after having attacked and destroyed a horse, carried the body of his victim for about sixty paces to the bank of a broad and deep river, over which he swam with his prey, and then dragged it into the adjoining wood. According to M. Sonnini he is as expert at[46] climbing as at swimming. "I have seen," he says, "in the forests of Guiana, the prints left by the claws of the Jaguar on the smooth bark of a tree from forty to

als or of a band of men passing within his reach, he uniformly singles out the last as the object of his fatal bound. When he has made choice of his victim he springs upon its neck, and, placing one of his paws upon the back of its head while he seizes its muzzle with the other, twists its head round with a sudden jerk, which dislocates its spine and deprives it instantaneously o

difficult to aim at him with precision. In this latter case some of the Indians are hardy enough to attack him single-handed; a perilous exploit, which, according to D'Azara, they perform in the following manner. Armed only with a lance, of five feet in length, they envelope their left arm in a sheep-skin, by means of which they evade the first onset of the furious animal, and gain sufficient time to plunge their weapon into his body before he can turn upon them for a second attack.

markably the case with the specimen lately in the Tower, whose portrait ornaments the present article. This animal was obtained by Lord Exmouth while on the American station, and accompanied the expedition to Algiers at the memorable bombardment of that nest of pirates. On his return to England, his Lordship gave it to the Marchioness of Londonderry, who soon afterwards presented it to his Majesty, by whose order it wa