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Thus, Felidae when young, and, in very agile, sprightly species like the Puma, throughout life, simulate all the actions of an animal hunting its prey sudden, intense excitement of discovery, concealment, gradual advance, masked by intervening objects, with intervals of watching, when they crouch motionless, the eyes flashing and tail waved from side to side; finally, the rush and spring, when the playfellow is captured, rolled over on his back and worried to imaginary death.
How strange that this most cunning, bold, and bloodthirsty of the Felidae, the persecutor of the jaguar and the scourge of the ruminants in the regions it inhabits, able to kill its prey with the celerity of a rifle bullet, never attacks a human being!
The peregrine has been observed, Baird says, capturing birds, only to kill and drop them. Many of the Felidae, we know, evince a similar habit; only these prolong their pleasure by practising a more refined and deliberate cruelty. The sudden appearance overhead of this hawk produces an effect wonderful to witness.
In these are found most of the fur-bearing animals; and, on account of the greater warmth of the climate, the true felidae the long-tailed cats here wander much farther north than upon the eastern side of the continent. But it is not our intention at present to cross the Rocky Mountains. Our journey will lie altogether on the eastern side of that great chain.
"Don't that man know what fear is?" wondered Harry, ignorant that the true mountaineer feels toward these vociferous felidae about the same contempt with which a plainsman regards a coyote. At length Fortner slackened his pace, and began to move with caution. "Are we coming upon the enemy again?" asked Harry, in a loud whisper, which had yet a perceptible quaver in it.
The other lioness goddesses are probably likewise destructive or hunting deities. The lesser felidae also appear; the cheetah and serval are sacred to Hathor in Sinai; the small cats are sacred to Bast, especially at Speos Artemidos and Bubastis. The bull was sacred in many places, and his worship underlay that of the human gods, who were said to be incarnated in him.
The rock-shelter of Entre-Roches is supposed to date from Paleolithic times, and if it were certain that there has been no displacement of the soil on which the parietal was found, it is to be concluded that trepanation was practised in the Quaternary period when man was living amongst the large extinct pachydermata and felidae.
It is well-known that preying upon other animals and feeding upon their flesh, is not a natural instinct of the brown bear; it is a habit that has its origin, first in the scarcity of other food, but which, once entered upon, soon develops itself into a strong propensity almost equalling that of the felidae.
It is supposed that he spends a good deal of his time ranging the forest in search of "bee trees." Of course he is a tree-climber climbs by the "hug," not by means of his claws, as do animals of the cat kind; and in getting to the ground again descends the trunk, stern-foremost, as a hod-carrier would come down a ladder. In this he again differs from the felidae.
I can hardly doubt that this rule is generally true, though difficult of proof. Among mammals, we see it strikingly displayed in Bats, and in a lesser degree in the Felidae and Canidae. We see the same rule in the distribution of butterflies and beetles.
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