Burned that fire within thine eyes?”
writes William Blake, and then he asks, “Did He who made the lamb make thee?” The French naturalist and English poet looked at the subject from the same standpoint. It was not necessarily seen wrongly on that account, but it happened that the view taken by both was an imperfect one. Deeper insight or more profound research would have resolved uncertainty in the one case, and checked extravagance in the other. Had they read the runes of nature aright, the answer to such questionings, the rebuke to such exaggerations, would have been found stamped upon the organization of everything that lives. Physical constitution is never an accident or a mistake; it is at once the consequence of special modes of existence, and the cause of their continuance. Bodily conformation and its correlates in mental structure are to brutes absolutely determinative.
“Most carnivorous of the carnivora,” writes W. N. Lockington (“Riverside Natural History”), “formed to devour, with every offensive weapon specialized to the utmost, the Felidæ, whether large or small, are relatively to their size the fiercest, strongest, and most terrible of beasts.” The tiger stands at their head. He must needs appreciate his destructive power and feel the desire to exercise it. Inherited tendencies and the pressure of necessity put his capabilities into action. Their exercise, transmitted traits, and those experiences implied in habit, make him what he is,—audacious, treacherous, wary, cunning, ferocious. These characteristics answer to the anatomical specialties by which his frame is distinguished,—his convoluted and back-reaching forebrain, protective coloring, differentiated and perfectly innervated muscles, his simple digestive tract, formidable armature, and padded feet.
THE PUMA
What is true with regard to the present geographical distribution of the cats, has been true always; throughout their fossil history the greater and more formidable Felidæ have been confined to the Eastern Hemisphere. A number of American species exist, however, ranging from among the smallest and most beautiful forms contained in this family, up to animals that in destructive power, only give place to their great African and Asiatic allies. The puma and jaguar have not filled so large a space in zoölogical literature as the lion and tiger; they have not attracted so much general attention, and are less known. But this is, to a considerable degree, the result of accident. For the most part, those who encountered them were men of a different stamp from the famous hunters whose adventures in Asia and Africa have made the animals of their forests and plains familiar and full of interest to so large a portion of the public in civilized lands.
THE PUMA.
[From a photograph by Gambier Bolton. Copyright.]
It is seldom that the throngs that pass before cages in which wild beasts are confined, contain a spectator who knows how perfect a creature a cat is. As a class these forms are adjusted to their place in nature better than other creatures, and also much better than the human race. Their distinctive characteristics are all strongly marked, and have persisted from a period so incalculably remote, that the Felidæ may in this respect be said to stand by themselves. “We have as yet,” remarks A. R. Wallace (“Geographical Distribution of Animals”), “made little approach towards discovering ‘their origin,’ since the oldest forms yet found are typical and highly specialized representatives of a group which is itself the most specialized of the carnivora.” No one acquainted with the evidence upon which this statement rests is likely to gainsay it, and its meaning is not obscure. The fact carries with it a necessary implication that animals of the species referred to, having followed a definite way of life longer than the rest, are more fit in every way to meet its requirements.
Perhaps the most striking illustration that could be given of the reality of what has been said, is the small difference actually existing between wild and domesticated cats. Domestication is so great and radical a change from the feral state, that the entire constitution of an animal is affected,—mind and body, temper, intelligence, form, color, fertility and physical capacity, are all modified. But it is not thorough enough to do away with the traits engendered in the Felidæ, and therefore it happens that after thousands of years, the house cat varies from the wild one so little in important and distinctive characteristics. Cattle and sheep were domesticated before the dispersion of the Aryan tribes; linguistic evidence places that fact beyond question. Cats, however, though introduced into Europe from Asia, as was the case also with the horse, ass, and goat, were no doubt first reclaimed from savage life in Egypt. On the Lower Nile domestic cats were sacred to Pasht, whom the Greeks called Bubastis, and identified with Artemis. She was represented with the head of a cat or lioness, as was Sechet also, a divinity equivalent to the Phœnician Astarte.