FIG. 180. Ocelot.
FIG. 181. Jackal.
OCELOT is an abbreviation of tlalocelotl, the name of this animal in Mexico, its native country. It is ferocious and carnivorous, and may be ranked with the jaguar and cougar, for it is very nearly the same size, and resembles them in figure and dispositions. A male and female were shewn at the fair of St. Ovide, in September 1764. They came from the neighbourhood of Carthagena, and had been taken from their mother in the month of October, 1763. They became so strong and cruel at the age of three months as to kill and eat the bitch which had nursed them. When we saw them, at a year old, they were about two feet long, and they had then, probably, not attained more than one half, or two-thirds, of their growth. These animals were shewn by the name of the tiger-cat, but we have rejected this denomination as precarious and confused, especially as the jaguar, serval, and the margay, or Cayenne cat, were sent to us under the same denomination, although those three animals are very different from each other, as well as from the one we are at present treating of.