[No. VI.]
In this GROUP by Mr. Edwin Landseer there is much of violent animal Expression, and Character fades before it, or rather, is absorbed in it. It tells a story of the past as well as the present, and is pregnant with a catastrophe not difficult to anticipate from the actions and expressions of the parties engaged. A Fawn has been seized by a Leopard, who has been despoiled of his prey by a more powerful Tiger. The Tiger in his turn becomes the victim of an enraged Lion.
The expression of the wounded Leopard is that of painful suffering mingled with dread. Together, they amount to agony. He shrieks while he submits. The Tiger is still enraged and resisting, though astounded with the power and suddenness of the Lion’s attack. He is losing his energy of resistance, and is beginning to feel that all resistance is vain. He roars with anguish; while his expression is that of terror, and indignation not yet subdued.
The Lion, who has just made his thundering spring, appears conscious of having fatally seized his adversary, and luxuriates fearlessly in his victory; and with a powerful and just expression of carnivorous enjoyment.—Meanwhile the characters of the animals, severally, are faithfully and specifically represented.
Although our main purpose be to exhibit rather a pictorial than a physiological view of the subject: having descanted on the word Character, we shall probably be expected to add, at least a word or two, on the leading characteristics of the carnivorous class of quadrupeds.
The generic characters of the Feline, or Cat, kind, are easily enumerated in the concise language of the naturalists. Their heads are round; their visages short: they have six cutting teeth, and two canine, in either jaw: their tongues are aculeated, the prickles inclining backward; their claws sharp, hooked, and retractile; their ears small and acuminated; they have five toes on each of the fore-feet, and four only on those behind.
Of this genera of Cats, we here exhibit the four principal species, Lions, Tigers, Leopards, and Panthers, of which the Lion is justly placed at the head—at least, the unanimous voice of ages has pronounced him to be the king of beasts, and we have enthroned him accordingly in our Title-page, ([No. I.]) They form a tribe that is especially and properly Carnivorous, being the only class of quadrupeds that are exclusively flesh-eaters. Their jaws are very completely armed for this purpose; their canine teeth being very long and angular, with the edges of the angles turned toward the inside of their mouths; so that when the animal has caused them to meet, or cross each other in the flesh of its prey, these formidable teeth will cut or tear a way through, by drawing them back without opening his mouth.
Their claws, and the formation of their feet, too, are eminently conducive to their predacious and carnivorous habits. They walk on their toes: yet not so much from that habitual stealthiness of pace, by which they advance unperceived till within a spring of their prey; as because it is also the means of that celerity of motion which is necessary to the very existence of animals that can feed only on flesh.
Their claws are exceedingly powerful; and they are enabled to draw them up into sheaths between their toes, so as to prevent their points from touching the ground; whence they are called retractile; and those claws are, in consequence, always kept sharp, unworn, and ready for active service.
The eyes of the Feline tribe—of every face in nature a striking and important feature—vary in the different species, and are capable of much alteration in the same animal; as instinctive impulse, or internal emotion, changes the expression of his countenance; and also from the degrees of light which act upon their pupils. Of Lions the pupils of the eyes are circular, and not of a yellow colour, as has been stated in the most diffuse modern dissertations on the Carnivora, but black. It is the iris of the Lion’s eye that is yellow. They appear to be best suited to nocturnal, or twilight, vision; and hence the Lion rarely hunts his prey while the sun is above the horizon—perhaps never, but when pressed by hunger in an extraordinary degree. The Tiger, on the contrary, will seek his prey by day as well as by night; and during twilight the colour of his eyes is that of a blue-green flame. If a stranger passes near a Tiger in a menagerie, the colour of the animal’s eyes will sometimes alter suddenly, from yellow-green to blue-green; not from any alteration in the degree of light acting upon them, but from mental excitement, and from a certain natural facility of expansion and contraction of the eye-pupils.