bones, wields with ease the formidable destructive weapons with which it has been endowed.

The first thing that struck me, on looking at the dead animal, was the massive and herculean fore-arm— a compound of the hardest muscles and wire-like tendons a measure told us that the circumference of this powerful limb was no less than 1 foot 7 inches, or nearly the size of an ordinary hat. Then the gigantic foot

arrested the attention, for it measured, at the lower surface, 6^ inches, and when outspread, 8 inches. A delicate, soft, harmless-looking foot is this, with a beautiful fringe of fur round the edge; but what do we see under this fur? Snugly concealed, like riflemen in

ambush, are those dread claws, which, when extended, and intent on blood, will tear furrows an inch or more deep in the thick skin of a buffalo or giraffe, or hold the powerful eland with a vice-like and deadly grasp. Then, again, remark the soft, velvet-like pads which fill up the hollow of the foot (the largest pad being 4 inches broad). Has human ingenuity ever contrived, or will it ever contrive, any such elastic, firm, yet noiseless material, which shall enable the wearer to steal up with a ghost-like motion upon the unsuspicious prey, be he ever so wide awake? We strip the skin from the foot, exposing the tendons (or leaders), which, though beautifully white and rounded, possess the strength of the twisted iron-wire rigging of a ship, and work with the ease of a greased rope in a well-worn pulley. We admire their excessive complexity, yet their admirable arrangement; and tracing them up to the actual claws, or talons, perceive how marvellous, yet simple, is the arrangement by which these formidable and lethal weapons are, without effort on the owner’s part, made to retract into a secure place of protection, and their sharp points to be sheathed like a dagger in its scabbard. Doubtless the inventor of the india-rubber spring, which

spontaneously closes the door of our dwelling-room, thought he had made a great discovery; but he is probably not aware that in the lion’s foot he may find the pattern of his invention registered by nature herself

Protruding from the lion’s lip, on either side, we observe a formidable display of whiskers, which in our own species are generally more for ornament than for use (except as Lady-catchers). In our friend the lion, on the contrary, we find that nature makes them serve a beneficial purpose, for they act as feelers, and those, too, endowed with great sensibility. When it is too dark to see, the lion feels his -way through the underwood by means of his whiskers, and pounces upon his prey. How is this done? We trace one of the whiskers to its root, and find that it terminates in a mass of highly-sensitive nervous substance, which forms an oblong bulb, as large as an apple pip; each hair has its own bulb, and these whiskers are therefore so many watchful sentries which take their posts on dark stormy nights, when the regular duty-men (the eyes) are unable to keep watch and guard. The same arrangement holds in our domestic puss. Should you doubt this, pull puss’s whiskers sharply and mark the

result. The Lion is gradually crawling up to seize his unsuspecting prey, and his eyes are fully occupied in watching their movements. He has, therefore, not much attention to spare for other things. He is, however, enabled to glide through the underwood and among the rocks by means of his outspread whiskers, which, just touching the obstructions, telegraph silently

to his brain, “ keep to the right, keep to the left, ground

free,” &c. The seal too has these whiskers with their sensitive nervous bulbs. In this case the idea is the same, viz., to enable the seal to give his whole attention to the fish he is pursuing, while the whiskers prevent him from running foul of the rocks among which the hunt is going on. I hope some day to write an article on these sensitive whiskers as developed in nocturnal and diurnal animals. The subject is full of interest, and has never yet been thoroughly investigated.*

The ox and the giraffe have long flexible prehensile tongues, by means of which the animal is enabled either

to cut the short grass of the field, or pull off the leaves from the lofty palm-trees. Not so the lion-—the dread slayer of the herbivorous races — his tongue is by no means smooth or prehensile, but, on the contrary, broad, thick, and rasping. The papillae, or elevated spots, which in most animals are soft and velvet-like, in the lion are converted into prominent and sharp horny excrescences. In the fresh state the tongue feels rough to the hand, but as it is dried the roughness becomes more perceptible, till at last we have a surface more like that of a farrier’s new file than of a tongue. In the dry tongue of the lion now before me, the horny spines at the top of the tongue are no less than one-sixteenth of an inch

See Appendix: Whiskers on Nose of the Horse.

in length; they gradually get smaller towards the root of the tongue, where they are set in oblique rows like the teeth on a file. Now this rough tongue is of great use to the beast, for having struck down his prey with his sledge-hammer claws, and gnawed by mouthfuls the flesh from the bones, he finishes his dinner by scraping at the bone with his tongue, and literally rasping every remaining portion of meat from off it in a more perfect way than does even the butcher from the marrow-bones he sends out to his customers. Domestic puss has this rough tongue as well as the lion. It may be well seen when she is lapping her matutinal milk, or picking at the rejected chicken-bone. Young observers should get a cat’s tongue, cut off all the meat with a pair of scissors, and dry the rough skin; the spines will be

then well seen. I must not forget, talking of horny spines, to mention the much-disputed story of the “ claw at the tip of the Lion’s tail.” The first thing I did was, of course, when at the lion’s post mortem, to examine if any such claw, or anything approaching to a claw, existed concealed on the tail of our specimen; but my search, as I expected, was not successful. This story of the claw on the tip of the lion’s tail has by many been thought to be an untruth and a myth; but there is foundation for the fact. It was observed by the ancients, for the lions represented on the Assyrian marbles have claws

at the end of their tails. Pliny describes the lion as “ lashing himself into a rage by means of his own spur.” Homer also is said to have mentioned it.* It remained * I have had great difficulty in finding the passage where Homer is said to describe the claw on the tip of the lion’s tail. The nearest we can get to it is the following, as kindly hunted up by my friend C. W. Standidge, Esq. After all, Homer does not mention the claw; he was too good an observer for that

“ Dear Buckland, “ Here's your lion.—Iliad Y' or XX, lines 170, 171. Oupfj 5e 7rXevpds re Kal lo")(icL dficporepccOev Mcurrlerai, ee 8* avrbu enorpdvei ptax^aacrOai.

“ Literally translated. “ He lashes his sides and thighs on both sides with his tail* and excites himself to battle.

“ Polemically translated “ He grins, he foams, he rolls his eyes around,

Lashed by his tail his heaving sides resound.

He calls up all his rage, he grinds his teeth,

Eesolved on vengeance or resolved on death. “ Nothing about his special claw. “ C. W. Standidge.” My friend, the Eev. Charles Wolley of Eton College, also wrote

: to me as follows “I have found both the passages to which you refer. The first is Pliny, N. H. viii. 19. Ejus (iracundice) in jprinciyio terra verberatur (caudd); incremento terga, cetj quodam incitamento, jlagellantur; i.e., as his rage increases, his back is lashed with it, as if it were an instrument to excite (his anger). “ This is the strict sense of the passage; and ‘ incitamentum/ though capable of being translated ‘ spur,’ if the context points to this sense, does not usually mean * a spur,’ which is ‘ stimulus, or ‘ calcar.’ It is hardly fair to ignore the ‘ ceu ’ as you do.

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therefore a sort of open question till the time of Blumen-bach, who described the prickles as “ small and dark-coloured, hard as horn, and placed in the very tip of the lion’s tail, surrounded at its base by an annular fold of

the skin.” The subject was in our own day taken up again by Mr. Woods; for in the u Proceedings of the Zoological

“ The passage in Homer is in Iliad T'. (XX.) 170. It is literally translated ‘ ‘ And with his tail he lashes his sides and loins on both sides, and drives himself on to fight.’ “ iTTOTpvvei, ‘ drives on,’ might well be translated * spurs on,’ but this would convey an incorrect idea of the expression, as far as Homer is concerned, as he never makes any allusion to riding on horseback, except in describing the performance of a mountebank.

“The metaphor is either from driving the war-chariots to battle, or from the practice of the officers in Oriental nations flogging their men on to the attack, as circumstantially described by Herodotus in his account of the battle of Thermopylae. I think in both the passages the idea intended to be conveyed is, that the tail is used as a ‘ whip ’ rather than a 1 spur.’ “ The lines in Homer are thus translated by Lord Derby tf * And with his tail he lashes both his flanks

And sides, as though to rouse his utmost rage.’ (Vol. ii. p. 363, line 197.) “ All Pliny says about lions is very interesting, though not trustworthy. You observe that he was aware of the fact of their taking to man-eating in their old age, when they could not catch antelopes. “ Yours very truly, “ Charles Wollut. “ Frank Buckland, Esq.”

3ER. III. V

;

Society,” September 11th, 1832, we find it recorded that a specimen was exhibited of a claw obtained from the tip of the tail of a young lion from Barbary; it was first seen on the living animal by Mr. G. Bennett, who pointed it out to the keeper; they secured the beast, and while handling the claw it came right off, and was brought under the notice of the Society. “ It was formed of corneous matter, like an ordinary nail, being

solid throughout the greater part of its length; towards the apex it is sharp; at the other extremity it is hollow, and a little expanded; it is flattened throughout its entire length, which does not amount to quite three-eights of an inch. Its colour is that of horn, but becomes darker, nearly to blackness, at the tip. Its presence or absence does not depend upon size, as the lions in Paris on which it was found were of considerable size, while that belonging to the Society, from which the present specimen was taken, is small and young nor upon sex, for although it is wanting in the female in London, it existed in the lioness at Paris.”

Mr. Woods had previously examined the tails of all the stuffed skins he had access to, and found it only in an adult Asiatic leopard. He remarks, “ that it is difficult to conjecture for what purpose these minute claws

are developed in so strange a situation, that of stimulat-ing the animals to anger being out of the question. It is at least evident from their smallness, their variable

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