All these are as alike in habits, allowing for different surroundings and food supply, as in appearance. Eating everything from nuts, berries, and insects, to fish, ground squirrels, and big game, their dentition comprises not only powerful canines, but molars capable of smashing bones. Bears are too slow and clumsy, however, to do much as big game hunters, save, perhaps, the polar giant in seizing seals, and it is therefore necessity rather than choice that reduces these really formidable beasts to the petty business of nibbling berry bushes, digging up bulbs or the nests of wasps and gophers, and tearing rotten logs to pieces in hope of finding ants and beetle grubs. The most inveterate insect hunter of the tribe is the Indian sloth, or honey bear. Sir Samuel Baker remarks that its favorite delicacy is termites, for which it will scratch a large hole in the hardest soil to the depth of two or three feet. "The claws of the forepaws are three or four inches in length, and are useful implements for digging. It is astonishing to see the result upon soil that would require a pickax to excavate a hole." Having reached the large combs at the bottom of the cavity the bear blows the dust away with a strong puff, and then draws the honey and larvæ out of the comb into its mouth by sucking in its breath.

Nevertheless bears eat a good many young and small animals, and in the neighborhood of farms steal many calves, colts, and pigs. It is an animal to be feared by men when met, although as a rule bears are inclined to run away rather than resist, except when a she-bear feels that her young are in danger. Bears are rather solitary, the males wandering about alone, the females accompanied by cubs often as big as themselves. The young, two as a rule, are born in midwinter in the family den, which may be a rocky cave or the hollow of an old tree, the center of a dense thicket or simply a bed beneath the snow. The cubs at birth are surprisingly small—not larger than rabbits—and are naked, blind, and very slow to develop; hence the mother is extremely solicitous about them, and heedlessly brave in their defense. Bears hibernate only in the coldest regions.

Allied to the bears is the large black and white "coon bear" (Æluropus), a rare, vegetable-feeding brute of eastern Tibet, which is a relic of the Pleistocene. Near it in structure is the queer Ælurus of the same region, which connects the bears with our raccoons and those other "little brothers of the bear," the kinkajous and coatis of the American tropics.

THE DOG FAMILY—WOLVES, FOXES AND JACKALS

Some of my readers may have asked themselves how the order of the families or other groups of mammals is determined—why the edentates follow the marsupials, the Rodentia come next, and so on. The reason is that their ancestors, so far as we know them as fossils, seem to have been related in a way that indicates such a succession of development in time. It is scarcely more than an indication, however, for although in describing them, or making a list, we must set the animals in a row, naturalists long ago ceased attempting to show that any linear arrangement of that kind represented the reality. The present variety among mammals (as in other classes) is the result of development along different lines from one or more points of beginning.

Throughout a long period in the early part of the Tertiary era there prevailed a class of beasts of prey, some as big as tigers, which, however, were by no means Carnivora, as we now know them, for their teeth in most cases were still of the insectivore type. These were the creodonts, of which I spoke a few pages back. They combined in their structure the features of all the different families of Carnivora, and it was not until there had developed from their stock a single family, Miacidæ, and the rest had died out, that the canine, or carnassial, teeth became prominent in their jaws, and nature found in this the right road to progress. To this anciently extinct family we may trace all the varieties of existing Carnivora. The oldest and most central stock appears to be that of the dog family (Canidæ).

The least of these are the jackals of Africa and Asia, small, active, noisy, reddish and variously marked animals like miniature wolves, which dwell in deserts and open districts, where they hide in dens during the day, and come out at night in search of mice and anything else they can get. They haunt the suburbs of towns, and do great service as scavengers, but also raid farms and villages, killing great numbers of poultry, lambs, and weakly sheep and goats by methods much like those of our American coyotes.

The coyote is a true wolf; and the wolves are connected with the jackals by a small intermediate species in India. Formerly the coyote ranged eastwardly throughout the prairie east of the Mississippi, but farmers gradually killed it off. On the sparsely settled plains, however, it survives from the Arctic Circle to the tropics in several species, and continues to maintain itself because its natural enemies have been killed off, and because it is extremely clever in dodging new perils. It is far more destructive to the ranchman's chickens, pigs, and lambs than even the big timber wolf, but, on the other hand, benefits the industry by aiding him in exterminating troublesome gophers, prairie dogs and rabbits.

The big gray wolf—the wolf par excellence—which our Western men usually call "timber" wolf, to distinguish it from the coyote (the wolf of the plains) is the most widely distributed of all beasts of prey, for despite the various names given it this fierce and capable animal is to be found throughout the northern zones of the globe, from Kamchatka, Japan, and northern India right around to Alaska. Where civilization prevails it has been killed off, yet lingers where mountains give it hiding places even in the oldest settled parts of Europe. In North America wolves abound in all the wilder parts of the West and North, contesting with skill and courage the effort of advancing civilization to get rid of them. This wolf, in its largest examples, such as the often pure white specimens of the Arctic coasts and islands (where it travels as far north as do the caribou and other game), may measure three and a half feet in length, exclusive of the bushy tail, and may weigh 150 pounds. Its color is typically rusty or yellowish gray above, more or less grizzled, while the underparts are whitish, and the tail is often tipped with black. These hues are paler in northern than in southern specimens, and in warm regions totally black races are known, one of which exists in Florida.

The wolf's mode of life is virtually that of the whole canine family, making allowances for differences in climate and circumstances. Choosing a convenient little cave among the rocks of a mountainside, or, when this is not handy, digging a burrow for themselves, a pair will establish a "den" in early summer, where presently six or eight whelps may be born; but usually only two or three survive babyhood. At this season small game is abundant, and the animals wandering around alone by day as well as by night, pick up a good living, grow fat and lazy, and are little to be feared save by the mothers of fawns or lambs. As the onset of winter fills the forests with snow, cold gales moan through the trees, and the long, dark nights enshroud an almost dead world, this peaceable disposition changes into a hungry ferocity and a force of craft and caution born of the direst need, which at last make the animal formidable to man himself. Yet actual attacks on men are much more rare than stories and traditions would lead one to think. It is at this season, when the rabbits and other small creatures are gone or hidden in hibernation, and large game must be depended on for food, that the wolves form themselves into small companies, or "packs," and assist one another. To this class of animals hunting is truly "the chase," for their method is, having found their quarry (in which the good nose for a trail and a keen hearing assist them), to keep it in sight and run it down. Having overtaken the quarry, a sideways leap enables them to thrust in the long canine, and drag on it—and the result is death unless the hunted creature is able to turn and fight off its foe with hoofs and horn.

The forests of southern Brazil harbor a long-legged, reddish species called "maned," which is a true wolf; and South America generally has several kinds of "fox dogs" (genus Lycalopex) that sufficiently make up for the absence of true wolves, as do jackals the lack of wolves in Africa and Arabia.

Foxes have long been regarded as constituting a separate genus under their Latin name Vulpes, but conservative naturalists now think they belong with the wolves in the genus Canis ("a dog"). The type is that of a smaller, more agile and delicate animal than a wolf or jackal, with a broader skull and sharper muzzle, larger ears, a longer, more bushy tail, and usually longer fur. Weaker than its wolfish relatives, though endowed with great swiftness, and used to playing the double rôle of hunter and hunted, its brain has been developed to a high degree to make up for its bodily deficiencies, and shows capacity for further development. Nevertheless the fox is not quite such a marvel of shrewdness as he is reputed to be, and fox hunters in Great Britain—under whose combination of care and chase his education has been more advanced than anywhere else—note much diversity in brain work among them.

Although the North American red fox has a different name from the typical European one it is virtually the same, and shows its skill and adaptability by continuing to live and flourish in the midst of our civilization, where it practices quite as much sly craft and success in chicken stealing as does "Reynard" on the other side of the ocean. The red fox is to be found all over the continent as far south as Georgia, and where the winters are cold his long and silky fur becomes of marketable value, especially in its darker varieties. The animal has touches of black on the tail and the legs, and this seems liable to affect the whole pelage in the North. Thus some are all black; others are black with every hair tipped with white, and are called "silvers"; others have a blackish band along the spine and across the shoulders. To these the name "cross-foxes" is given. The skins so marked bring high prices, and an extensive industry has arisen in Canada by breeding black and marked foxes in captivity, where pure color strains have been developed, whereas in nature one or more of these melanistic varieties may occur in any litter of normally red parents.

North America has three or more other species of fox, one of which, the gray fox, is common throughout the country east and south of the Appalachian heights, as far north as the lower valley of the Hudson River. It is smaller and grayer than the red fox, is more of a forest-keeping animal, and does not burrow, but makes its nest in the bottom of a decayed tree or stump, or within a hollow log. Living in a climate where small game is abundant the year round, and chicken-stealing comparatively easy, he has not been driven to the straits of getting food in winter to which the northern foxes are driven, and hence has developed less of the ingenuity and cleverness they show. On the high plains of the West dwells a small, active fox, known as the kit fox, or "swift," which feeds on the ground squirrels and mice of that region, and makes its home in a burrow (often one dug by a prairie dog), where it hibernates in winter. It is now rare and very wary.

Throughout the polar regions right around the globe is found the arctic fox in great numbers, and wandering in summer, at least, to the farthest islands, where its prey consists of lemmings, rabbits, ptarmigan and fish. This is a shy little beast, with blunt nose, short, rounded ears, a very long, bushy tail, and the soles of the feet well shod with hair, giving them a firm and warm grip on the snow and ice over which they leave tiny tracks from Labrador to Siberia. In summer its dress is brown with whitish or drab underparts; but in autumn this is replaced by a coat of long, pure white hair beneath which is an undercoat of fine wool. A small proportion, however, are never either white or dark brown, but are slate gray all the year round. In some rather southerly places the "blues" prevail, forming a local race. Such is the case in Greenland, Iceland, and the Aleutian Islands, where blue foxes are now carefully preserved and cared for in a semi-domestic condition for the sake of their valuable fur. Several small kinds of foxes occur in Asia, and in India one affords some sport with hounds. The prettiest of all are the little sand-colored, big-eared "fennecs" of the deserts of northern Africa and Arabia. No foxes tame well, nor do any of them cross with dogs as wolves and jackals constantly do, and apparently no fox blood has entered into the composition of the domestic dog.

There remain in this ancient and cosmopolitan family a considerable number of animals which from their general appearance we call "dogs." Among these is the long-bodied, short-legged, primitive "bush dog" of Guiana; the "bakoor" of South Africa; several Oriental species; and the hated "hunting dog" of Africa. The last named is a terror even to a lion. It ranges the country in swift-footed packs, dreaded by every creature of both forest and veldt, and every writer increases its reputation for both strategy and ferocity. This has led to its being killed off, until now it is common only in the remote wilderness. Formerly it was known even in Egypt, and it is the party-colored, prick-eared dog represented on the ancient mural paintings at Beni Hasan and elsewhere.

Of the Asiatic wild dogs the most familiar is that one of India called in the north "buansuah" and in the south "dhole." Like the others it is normally rusty red in color, and makes its lair in rocky jungles, whence, more often by day than by night, it makes its forays usually in packs from which even the leopard and tiger flee—just as in this country half a dozen curs will send a cougar or jaguar up a tree in fright. But it avoids settlements, and does little damage to domestic animals.

This brings us to the consideration of the origin of our domestic dogs, a matter which seems to me more simple than some authors have regarded it. This was doubtless among the very first animals to become attached to the camp or family of primitive man, and in every case, at first, at least, it would be of some local species of wolf, for anatomists agree that no admixture of any blood outside the genus Canis is traceable in the dog; and probably would be cherished or tolerated as a reserve supply of food rather than as an aid in hunting. But it is not unreasonable to suppose that when famine came and the stone ax was raised against the poor animals, those that had proved good watchers, or were the special pets of the women and children, would be the last to be sacrificed and sometimes would be saved altogether. Thus an improving and alterative selection would have begun almost from the start. Moreover, these early camp dogs would become modified by interbreeding and by the influences of captivity; and as their vagabondish owners wandered about would be crossed not only with diverse sorts of tamed dogs, but with the wild stocks of new countries; and this complication would increase as civilization extended. Nevertheless this appears not quite to complete the story. There is a quality which we recognize as "doggy," and as something distinctive. Whence came it? I am of the opinion that it is derived from one or more kinds of canine animals, exterminated by primitive man, which were more "doggy" than wolfish, and which formed in large part the stock of the first domesticated dogs. This supposition is supported by the fact that there have been found remains of a distinct canine species, allied to the Australian dingo, which was domesticated by Neolithic men, and perhaps contributed to existing varieties of the dog. The earliest Egyptian monuments show pictures of large dogs with "lop" ears—denoting one of the most striking differences between dogs and wild wolves or jackals, whose ears are invariably "pricked."

THE SOURCE OF COSTLY FURS

A descendant of the Creodonta called Cynodictis, which lived in the Eocene, or earliest of the Tertiary periods, is regarded as the forefather of the dog family, but its character is such that it might as well be said to be the progenitor of the weasel family (Mustelidæ), which may thus be suitably considered the nearest relatives of the Canidæ. These are the small, but alert, muscular and wide-awake animals whose coats, adapted to the cold regions in which most of them live, furnish us with warm and beautiful furs; hence the Mustelidæ may be called the family of "fur bearers." They resemble the dog tribe in the breadth of the skull, and in the dentition, which serves well for the wide variety in their fare; but instead of the long, high-stepping legs of the galloping dogs they have short, strong limbs adapted to creeping, digging, climbing, or swimming. The swimmers are the otters—one marine, the other a denizen of rivers and lakes. The sea otter is peculiar to our northwestern coast, where it used to be very abundant from California to Bering Sea, but is now so rare, on account of the great demand for its unequaled fur, that its pelt is worth several hundred dollars to the fortunate hunter. It is truly pelagic, rarely landing anywhere but on some outer reef or isolated rock, and eating fish, sea urchins, and crabs; and is much larger than the land otter, and with a short, flattened tail instead of the long, tapering one that characterizes the latter. Of the river otters about ten species are recognized, scattered all over the cooler parts of the world, and much alike in their four webbed feet and fish-eating habits. They are lively, playful creatures, and by their wariness, nocturnal habits, and skill in hiding their burrows, made in the bank with an underwater entrance, they are able to persist here and there in the midst of civilization.

Allied to the otters in structure are the badgers and skunks. Of the former, our badger has been killed off everywhere except in the northwest, where it still digs its deep holes in the ground for its daylight rest and partial hibernation, and finds plentiful food among the gophers, doing the ranchmen more good by destroying these pests than it does harm by its digging. The European badger differs in various ways; and there is an Oriental one, the "stinking" teledu, which illustrates the fetid odor that belongs to all of this family. This disagreeable quality is developed in the skunks into an effective weapon of defense. The food of skunks consists mainly of insects and field mice, and is everywhere so abundant that they find civilization favorable to them rather than otherwise, and remain numerous all over the country in several species, of which the familiar large northern skunk, and the small southern striped one, are best known. The skunks are confined to America, but South Africa has a very similar creature in the zorilla.

We now come to a large number of vigorous, bloodthirsty and cunning little carnivores, the terror of small game, as are the cats of larger animals, which are grouped by their similarity of structure in the "weasel" section of the family (Mustelinæ). Some are mainly terrestrial, others arboreal in habit of life. All have rather long bodies, short legs armed with strong, sharp claws, pointed heads, catlike teeth, and brains equal, if not superior, to any other carnivore. Among the terrestrial species the glutton of Europe and its analogue in Canada, the wolverine, are prominent. The wolverine is a large, shaggy, somewhat clumsy animal that seeks its prey mainly on the ground, but occasionally climbs to a low branch or an overhanging rock whence it may leap upon the backs of a deer or sheep. It displays the greatest sagacity and persistence in getting a living where life is precarious; and is so clever in robbing the trappers' lures and penetrating his "caches" that the forest people consider it hardly anything else than a devil on four legs, and charge it with deliberate malice. The voracity of its European cousin long ago became the subject of ridiculous traditions, and has given the word "glutton" to the language. Two similar, but smaller, mustelines, the tayra and the grison, inhabit Central and South America. The latter defends itself in the same manner as the skunk.

The weasels, stoats, polecats, minks, and the like form a group distinctly northern, except that one species ranges southward into the Andes. They do their work on the ground, although some are able to climb trees. Slender, lithe, sharp-clawed, secretively colored, and endowed with strength, speed and cleverness, the weasels are the scourge and terror of the ground-keeping animals, and do more than any other class of agents to restrain mice, gophers and similar nuisances. Europe and Siberia have the stoat, the ermine-weasel and the polecat, a domestic form of which is the ferret; and we have in North America several distinct weasels, as the short-tailed and the long-tailed of the East, the bridled weasel of the Pacific Coast, the black-footed ferret of the plains, and the little six-inch "mouse hunter" of the Northwest, which is the smallest carnivore known. All the northern weasels become pure white in winter when they live in a region where the snow lies continuously and the cold is steady; but south of that line they do not change color. The change from the summer brown to the winter white—when they become "ermines"—is produced by an actual loss of color in the hair; but the spring change back to brown is effected by shedding the old white hair and getting a new brown coat. In the Middle Ages ermine fur was permitted to be worn only by royalty, and later by judges on the bench. A somewhat different, and strictly American, species is the mink. It is somewhat less slender than the weasels, and is semiaquatic in habits, dwelling always near streams, where it feeds on earthworms, frogs, and fishes. Having this kind of food, and being keen-witted and secretive, it has been able to continue to exist in the midst of civilization, and the vast number of its dark pelts that come to the fur market are nearly all got by farmers' boys in traps set near home.

The most valuable of the fur bearers, however, are those that belong to the forests of the North and dwell in trees—the sables, martens, and pekans. The sable is Siberian, the marten is North European, and the pine marten and pekan are North American. The first three are hardly distinguishable, each averaging about eighteen inches in length, exclusive of the long, furry tail, and are brown, somewhat lighter on the underparts, the breast-spot of the Canadian species being orange. The body is long and supple, the legs short and the toes separate, with sharp, long claws, as becomes so expert a tree-climber. The martens exhibit great agility and grace in their movements, and live usually in trees, furnishing with a bed of leaves a hollow in a lofty decaying trunk or sometimes in a rocky crevice. Here the young are brought forth in litters of six or eight early each spring. In winter, however, they descend daily, and hunt rabbits and other prey over the snow. This is particularly true of the big Canadian pekan, or "fisher" marten, which is the least common of the tribe. These martens fade away as civilization advances toward their forest retreats, and now are to be obtained only in the wildest parts of the Canadian woods; and the effort to tame and breed them in captivity has met with little success.

CIVETS, MONGOOSES AND HYENAS

This group of Old World animals represents the product of lines of descent that had their origin very near that of the dogs, as is particularly evident in the history of the hyenas (family Hyænidæ). But between the noble courage and fidelity of the dog and the cowardly brutishness of the hyena lies a great distance in character—as it appears from the human point of view. Of course it will not do to apply our highly elaborated standards to a moral estimate of wild animal behavior, or to use seriously such terms as "cruel," "selfish," and the like, especially in the case of the predatory beasts that work hard for their captures, must kill them the best way they can, and must satisfy their own wants before yielding place to rivals or inferiors; yet we cannot help admiring certain qualities in some of them and disliking others, as if they were inspired by praiseworthy or blameworthy motives. In the character of the hyenas, thus criticised, there is nothing admirable except their extraordinary brute strength. This is shown chiefly in their big heads, where their jaws are filled with teeth of extraordinary size, and are worked by muscles that enable them to crunch the leg bones of an ox, or indent and bend thick iron, of which amazing examples are given by Selous, Neuman and other African sportsmen. Otherwise they are the meanest of brutes, hated and despised by every man and beast in the countries (Africa and southern Asia) that they afflict.

Related to them, but very different in every way are the many species of ichneumons and civets (family Viverridæ) of the same parts of the world. The ichneumons, or mongooses, are small, dark-colored, unspotted animals, varying in size from that of a weasel to the bigness of a house cat, with compact bodies and pointed muzzles. They are active, bold and predacious, living on small game of every sort, and making their homes in holes in the ground. They are noted for their animosity to reptiles, and in ancient Egypt were protected as "sacred" because they killed asps and hunted for and ate crocodiles' eggs. The old term "ichneumon" has disappeared, however, in favor of the term "mongoose," which is the name of the East Indian species famous for snake killing. It is able, by its astonishing quickness, to spring upon and kill a cobra, even when that deadly snake is prepared to strike at its little foe. Mongooses were colonized in Jamaica and other West Indian islands years ago to destroy the rats that were a plague in the sugar plantations; but they presently turned their attention to the poultry as easier game, and became a greater nuisance than the rats. These fierce little snake killers constitute the "herpestine" section of the family.

The "viverrine" section contains the civets, which have elongated bodies, terrierlike heads, small, round, five-toed feet with imperfectly sheathed claws, long, often bushy tails, and coats of rough dark-colored hair marked with blackish stripes, bars, or squarish blotches. The species are numerous, and varied, those of central Africa, called "genets," resembling weasels. They include the linsangs of the East Indies, with soft, fawn-colored fur; several East Indian species inhabiting trees and going by the name of "tree cats" and "toddy cats," one of which is domesticated as a mouser and pretty pet by the natives; and the black binturong of the Orient, which is the only animal of the Old World, not a marsupial, that has a prehensile tail.

The distinctive peculiarity of the true civet cats is the possession of a pair of open pouches in the groin holding an oily substance having an intense musky odor and known as "civet." This is present in the five Oriental species, but is most copious in the civet cat of northern Africa, which on this account is kept captive and occasionally relieved, by the aid of a small spoon, of its civet for which perfumers will pay a high price.

Madagascar possesses a remarkable animal in the foussa, or fossane, which is nearly the size of our puma, has a weasellike head and a very long tail, and is a fierce nocturnal marauder. It is classed with the Viverridæ, but stands intermediate between them and the cats.

CHAPTER XXXIV
BEASTS OF PREY—Continued

In the cats (family Felidæ) we come to the most recent and advanced development of the carnivorous type, by straight descent from the Eocene Miacidæ. Their cardinal characteristics are found in their round heads and short muzzles; their teeth fitted for cutting rather than chewing, with sharp and slender canines very prominent; their sheathed claws; and their powerful activity. Although the civets and the foussa have retractile claws they do not show the perfection exhibited in this feature in the cat family. Here the final bone of every toe (the terminal phalange) is so hinged upon the one next behind it that ordinarily it stands upright, held there by an elastic ligament, with the sharp, curved claw hidden in a sheath of skin and thus kept from touching the ground and so becoming blunted; for in the cat's method of work sharp claws are needed to hold the prey on which it has leaped until its teeth can come into play. When this seizing leap is made a tendon running along the underside of the toe is retracted, pulling down the claw and causing it to pierce and hold the body of the victim. This is the explanation of Puss's familiar scratching ability, and accounts for the fact that while dogs, developing long legs for their style of attack, chase and finally seize their prey with their big, strong canines, cats steal upon it or more often lie in ambush and pounce on it, using their slender canines mainly as piercers. The cats do their hunting mostly alone, and are therefore largely at the mercy of wolves, etc., who go in packs; and herein lies the origin of the fear and hate with which cats regard all dogs.

The cats are a very uniform group, all the many species belonging to the single genus Felis, except the few lynxes and the cheetah. No better example of the race can be found than our "fireside sphinx." She is a direct descendant of the "Caffre," or "Libyan" cat, a native of northeastern Africa, and especially of Egypt, where she still runs wild. Reddish sandy in color, with faint, broken, darker bars across the body, limbs, and tail, and narrow vertical lines on the face, excellent copies of this original of all the domestic cats of the western world, at least, may often be seen in our houses. This likeness is supported by the evidence of history and archæology—the skeletons of Egyptian cat mummies, and bones associated with the dawn of history. In regard to the present, however, some deduction must be made. In all parts of the world one or another of the smaller wildcats of the country have been kept as pets in native houses; and wherever the people have been far enough advanced to raise and store grain, they have cultivated a cat or some other animal to free their granaries from thieving mice. It was for this purpose, no doubt, that the cats of Egypt were first tamed; and then, to make the people prudently keep them and care for them, the priests invented a beneficent and cheerful cat goddess, who, naturally, was said to walk abroad mostly by moonlight. When the tamed Egyptian cats reached Europe with the early Phœnician colonists and traders they would certainly soon meet and interbreed with the native stock; and to such crossing is probably due the banded or "tabby" cats. On the other hand, brindled cats were formerly unknown in eastern Asia, whose spotted or foxy house cats were derived from other and local sources. Since intercourse between Europe and the Orient became frequent, more or less mixture has occurred; although one very distinct Eastern breed persists—the long-furred Persian or Angora cats, a race probably derived prehistorically from the manul, of Turkestan.

The differences between members of this genus Felis, all of which seem able to interbreed, when similar in size, are chiefly of size and coat. Their prey and hunting methods are substantially alike everywhere, and in domestication cats are slow to vary from the wild type in any respect except in color—a result of their mixed ancestry. Puss remains a savage in a civilized coat, and, accepting condescendingly the novel comforts offered her, refuses to forsake her own forest gods for the fireside shrines of her tempters.

The word "wildcat" is naturally used for any small feline, but strictly belongs to the yellowish, tabby-marked, forest cat (F. catus) of Europe and Siberia, now becoming rare. Closely allied to it is the manul, of the central Asian steppes, where the long fur that envelopes it (as preserved in our domestic Persian beauties) is required by the awful cold of those lofty plains. Several other small cats inhabit the desert parts of southern Asia, which abound in rodents; and the long-legged, powerful, fawn-colored caracal ranges, nowhere numerously, from India and Mesopotamia around to Arabia and South Africa. Africa has several other cats of the open country, the best known of which is the swift-running, handsome serval, which is an expert tree climber. Southeastern Asia has three or four beautifully marked forest cats, and four of great size—three leopards and the tiger.

The typical leopard is distributed from China and Borneo westward to southern Arabia and all over Africa, except in deserts and cold mountains; but the ounce, which may be regarded as a variety of it, inhabits the Himalayas, staying near the borders of the snow line for the most part, and another beautiful variety, the clouded leopard, frequents the forests of the median slopes of that vast range. The ground color of the leopard is yellowish brown, of varying intensity, and is thickly covered with rosettes of black spots inclosing a clear area, with the breast and belly white. The favorite haunts of leopards are rocky, brushy hills with holes suitable for a den, where they may watch the surrounding country, and at sunset descend with astonishing celerity and stealth to cut off any straggling animal returning to the village at nightfall. They prey boldly on the small Hindu cattle and ponies, but more habitually on the sheep, goats, and dogs, and now and then (but rarely) turn man-eaters.

The leopard cannot overcome, ordinarily, animals as large as the lion and tiger slay, but everything of lesser size is acceptable, down to robbing birds' nests and clawing grubs out of rotten wood. It is somewhat smaller than our cougar, a male in good condition weighing about 125 pounds.

The tiger—for there is only one, in spite of circus advertisements of a "royal Bengal" as something different—is purely Asiatic, the species ranging from the Caucasus and the mountains of Ararat to the East Indies (Sumatra and Java), and northward to central Siberia and Sakhalin. It is to be found throughout all India, but does not occur in Ceylon.

Speaking of the tiger always brings to mind that other great cat, the lion. These powerful marauders dispute the title of "king of beasts." Their respective realms overlap but little. The lion, like the other big cats, is a relic of a diminishing race and kingdom. In the early Stone Age the "cave" lion (virtually the same as the present Felis leo) roamed throughout the southern half of Europe, and its final extermination north of the Mediterranean was doubtless accomplished by prehistoric men. Afghanistan, Beluchistan and northern Persia were rid of them long ago. A century ago lions were more or less prevalent in northwestern India, but now none remain save a few in the Gheer, a wooded hilly tract of Kattiawar. In Persia they survive only in Farsistan, where marshes afford shelter, and the hosts of pigs feeding on the acorns of the oak forests furnish subsistence. But they were long ago exterminated from all Asia Minor, Arabia, Egypt, and Algeria. From Abyssinia, and the southern Sahara southward to the Orange River, lions still exist except in the most populous districts, and in some places are very numerous. This range of territory shows that, unlike the forest-loving tiger, the lion is an inhabitant of open, bushy country, finding its game in the herds of antelopes, zebras, and similar plains-running animals rather than in the jungle fauna to which the tiger is confined; also that the tiger is inured to a far colder climate. This difference in habitat and hunting requirements accounts, in the minds of those who pay much attention to adaptive (or "protective") coloration, for the difference in their dress, for the tiger is said to become almost invisible in its yellow coat and vertical black stripes amid the flickering shadows of the wood, or when creeping through the long Indian grass, while the unmarked, grayish yellow, or sand tint, of the lion is equally unnoticeable on the desert or on the sere veldt of its East African hunting grounds. The great mane of the male lion—but some never acquire this ornament, or only scantily—and his greater height at the shoulder give him a majestic mien.

A lion of large size measures about nine and a half feet from the nose to the tip of the tail, which is about three feet long; stands three and a half feet high at the shoulders; and weighs about five hundred pounds. Most specimens, however, fall far short of these figures; and the largest examples have come from South Africa. The dimensions and weight of tigers average just about the same, the extreme examples on record having no doubt been measured along the curves of the body instead of in a straight line between the two terminal points, nose and tip of tail, as is the proper method. The literature relating to these two royal and puissant beasts is immense in its extent, and the best of it is that written by the hunter-naturalists who during the past century have studied and fought them in their native wilds.

The western hemisphere has a series of native cats which, although not equal in size and strength to the lion and tiger, are hardly less formidable in view of the game they hunt. The biggest is the jaguar, which is found from western Texas to northern Argentina. It is about the size of the leopard, but has a bulkier body, bigger head, shorter and more massive limbs, and shorter tail; hence, while less active and supple, it is perhaps more powerful than the leopard, and certainly is stronger than the puma. The ground color varies from the yellowish gray seen in arid Paraguay to almost red in the steaming equatorial swamps, while in the lower Orinoco Valley deep brown and black ones are common; but there is only one species. The coat is everywhere spotted with black, not in the leopard's hollow rosettes, but forming larger, irregular groups, each inclosing a black central spot.

This is the "tigre" of the American tropics, and indeed, is so called wherever Spanish is spoken. It hunts the largest game of its country, especially tapirs and deer; and wherever domestic animals are reared it becomes a destructive pest. For the most part, however, these cats subsist on capybaras and other rodents; and in Mexico on peccaries, striking down stragglers and then hastening up a tree out of the way of the furious herd of these sharp-toothed pigs brought together by the squealing of the first victim. Rarely found away from water, which seems as necessary to it as to the tiger, it is not surprising to find that in such places as the reedy borders of the La Plata fish form its main diet, snatched from the water by the paw. On the Amazon it feeds largely on turtles and their eggs. It attacks the manatee in its own element, and has been seen "dragging out of the water this bulky animal, weighing as much as an ox." Even the crocodile and cayman are regularly preyed upon. Its fondness for monkeys is also well known, and it is hated and reviled by them with the same fury as leads the East Indian apes to hurl sticks and bad language at the tiger.

The "cougar," as Buffon named it, the "puma" of the Peruvians, "panther" and "mountain lion," as it is known in the United States, is another big American cat familiar to woodsmen from New England, Minnesota, and northern British Columbia southward to Patagonia; and everywhere it is so precisely uniform that the most hair-splitting systemists have been unable to subdivide its species (Felis concolor) into local varieties. Its upper parts vary from foxy red to a dull blue, this difference in color having no reference to age, season or locality. The underparts are white; and there are no spots anywhere except that the lips and outer rim of the ear are black, and a patch of white marks each side of the muzzle. The panther was much dreaded by the early settlers of the Eastern States and by the frontiersmen settling the Mississippi Valley, who were more alarmed by its doleful screams as it wandered about in the night, than by any history of harm, for it avoided men with a greater fear than their own; nevertheless, it became a nuisance by its raids on the farmer's live stock and he killed it off, so that now pumas are to be met with only in the forested and swampy fastnesses of some of the Gulf States and in the Far West. There they still do great damage to the young animals on ranches, especially where horses are plentiful on the range. This is equally true of South America. Nowhere, however, is the puma feared by mankind as is the jaguar; on the contrary, remarkable stories are recorded, and constantly being verified by experience, not only of the cowardice of the animal, but of its apparent desire to make friends with humanity, following lonely persons without harming them, apparently merely in satisfaction of an innocent curiosity. It is hunted usually with dogs, to escape which it will climb into a tree, and once there remain to be shot rather than come down to fight, even when the hunters are close up.

Tropical America is the home of several smaller cats, some of which among the spotted ones are probably only varieties of the ocelot. This highly variable but always beautiful creature is about two and a half feet long in body, rather long in the legs, is an expert tree-climber, and is abundant from Oklahoma southward into the Brazilian forest, but has a different name in every country. It is grayish, thickly marked with fawn-colored, black-edged, oval patches and stripes in endless variety; and its fur is one of the most marketable in the country. On the prairies and plains of the open country south of Brazil the pampas cat, or "pajero," is common. It is of robust form, with long hair, very plain in its grayish tint on the back, but beautifully spotted and striped on the belly and legs. It is a ground-runner, preying on rodents and birds. Brazil has in its forests a notable cat of medium size called "jaguarundi," with a noticeably slender form, short legs and a tail nearly as long as its body. It is dark gray in hue and entirely unspotted. This may, on further study, turn out to be only a variety of the "eyra," another cat of the tropics, sometimes met with as far north as the Rio Grande Valley, which looks in its unspotted chestnut coat more like a huge weasel than a cat. It is a graceful and nimble climber, and lives on prey caught in trees.

Our common "bobcat," the wildcat best known to most readers, is a lynx—one might say the lynx, since in spite of the wide variety that specimens show between those of Quebec and those of Texas, for example, all seem to be one species, which is only locally different from the lynx of the Old World. But Spain appears to possess a distinct species in the pardine lynx. Lynxes differ from the typical cats (Felis) in having only two instead of three pre-molar teeth, but most notably in their heavy bodies, stout limbs, big and powerful feet, very short, thick tails, and the tufts of hair on the tips of the ears. The big Canadian lynxes are clothed in coats of long grizzled hair, valuable in the fur market and suited to the freezing winters of their home, where their fare during the cold months is restricted almost entirely to hares; but in the United States, and especially toward the south, these cats are much smaller, have thin coats and show reddish and yellowish tints with much spottings. They have survived the presence of civilization wherever rough hills or swampy forests give them a refuge, and they prey on mice, rabbits, birds, and poultry.

A single cat remains to be mentioned, the curious cheetah, or hunting leopard, which is known all over southern Asia, and Africa, and in India and Persia is trained to hunt antelopes. It is somewhat less in size of body than the leopard, but stands on long legs, and in color is yellowish, with many obscure blackish spots. Its great peculiarity, however, is the fact that its claws are not retractile, like those of the true cats, or only partly so; and that it chases its prey with great speed and in a doglike manner, although lacking the dog's persistence and endurance. This mingling of characteristics makes it hard to classify, and it perhaps should have led, instead of closed, the chapter on the cat family.

CHAPTER XXXV
INSECTIVORA—HEDGEHOGS, MOLES AND SHREWS

Again we have to deal with the scattered and feeble relics of a once important race; but that was long ago, even as geologists use the word long, for the order of insectivores (Insectivora) may be traced backward to the very earliest, hardly identifiable, fossil remains of mammalian pioneers in a reptilian world. These are known mainly by their dentition, which in this order is characterized by weak canines, small sharp incisors, and all the back teeth small, with many points and sharp edges designed for cutting through the shards of insects, shells of eggs, snail shells and the like, rather than for chewing. They had become, even in the Eocene period, a numerous and varied group, including arboreal, terrestrial, and aquatic types, some of considerable size, besides many minute forms comparable to the moles and shrews of the present day, and very likely ancestral to them. At the beginning of the Tertiary, they are indistinguishable from the earlier of the creodonts, but these rapidly developed into powerful beasts, while the insectivores retained more nearly their ancient ways, and in the later Tertiary diminished rapidly in numbers and variety. To-day only a few survivors are left, protected from their enemies by armor, as in the case of the hedgehogs; by a subterranean mode of life, as the moles; by their agility, minute size, and unpleasant odor and taste, as are the shrews; or, finally, by their exile in some remote corner of the world, where enemies are few. Thus we find remnants of families so widely separated as Madagascar and Cuba—the same disintegration that has overtaken many another ancient and decadent tribe; and their organization is so generalized that systemists find it difficult to place them in any serial arrangement with other orders; the big Malayan kaguan, for instance, which lives in trees and looks and behaves like a flying squirrel, was long classed with the lemurs.

Oldest of the existing insectivores, and nearest the original type, is the hedgehog of Europe, which, when rolled up, presents to its enemy a living chestnut bur of stiff spines hardly bigger than a baseball. All day it lies curled up asleep in an underground nest (where in winter it hibernates), and wanders about at night hunting for insects, worms, snails, slugs and the like, and savagely attacking and killing every viper it comes across—a valuable little animal, preserved by every intelligent gardener. Next to it are the lively little "tupaias," or tree shrews of the East, and the queer, long-nosed, kangaroo-shaped jumping shrews of the deserts. A rarer oddity is the river shrew of West Africa, looking and acting like a miniature muskrat. Then there are the "almiquis" of Cuba and Haiti, which suggest small, ground-traveling opossums, whose nearest relatives are the spiny "tenrecs" of Madagascar.

More familiar to us are the moles and shrews of northern countries. Moles are chiefly remarkable for the adaptation of their frames to the requirements of an underground existence, in which they must travel and seek their food, and not merely make their nightly home in burrows. This has brought about an alteration of the forelimbs into digging tools of really gigantic power when we consider the size of the animal, and a strength of shoulders that enables them to bore their way through loose soil without shoveling it out, save at long intervals. Everybody knows the upheaved ridges that mark their paths on the lawn as they move here and there beneath the grass roots in search of grubs and earthworms. One of our common species, preferring wet meadows to the uplands, is the star-nosed mole, whose muzzle is encircled by pink tentacles, very sensitive, which give it its name.

Highest in rank among insectivores, though least in size, are the shrews, one of which, our Cooper's shrew, is the smallest of all mammals. They are mouselike in appearance, but with long, flexible, much bewhiskered snouts, and are ceaselessly active, wandering about underneath leaves, old grass, and logs, and boring their way into loose loam or the punky wood of decayed stumps, in search of earthworms, grubs, beetles, slugs, and similar prey, including young mice and the fledglings of ground-nesting birds, and varying this fare by bites from soft-shelled beechnuts, tuberous roots, etc. They are quick of hearing, bold, pugnacious, and fierce, often killing and eating other shrews; difficult to keep alive in captivity, utterly untamable, and easily frightened to death.