Felis Onca. Linn.

It can scarcely fail to have been remarked by those who have perused¹ the preceding pages with moderate attention that the species of cats described in them, including the largest and most formidable of the whole genus, are exclusively natives of the Old World, and confined to the hot and burning climates of Southern Asia and of Africa. A second and more numerous class, of which, however, no example exists at present in the Tower Menagerie, and which, consequently, it does not fall within our province to illustrate², occupy the colder and northern regions of both hemispheres. These belong principally to the same subdivision with the Lynx[42] (being, like him, distinguished³ by the pencils of long hairs which surmount⁴ their ears), and to that which comprehends the domestic cat; and are all of diminutive⁵ size and trifling⁶ power when compared with those monstrous⁷ productions of the torrid zone, the Lion, the Tiger, and the Leopard⁸. The reader is not, however, to imagine that the smaller species exist only in the vicinity of the pole and in the temperate⁹ regions of the earth: he will find, on the contrary, that many of them are natives of more southern climes, and commit their petty ravages¹⁰ under as fierce a sun as that which fires their more dreaded¹² competitors in the career of rapine and of blood. Of one of these, the true Lynx of

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