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.