It may be added that the specific name _lagopus_, or "hare-foot," was given to this fox from the soles of its feet being densely covered with woolly hair, which gives them some resemblance to the feet of a hare. Cuvier remarks that other foxes acquire this hair on the soles when taken to northern lands.
The specimens, figured so admirably by Mr Wolf, were drawn from some brought alive to the Zoological Gardens by one of the late Arctic expeditions.--_A. White, in "Excelsior" (with additions)._
[113] _Edinburgh Review_, 1841, vol. lxxiv. p. 77.
[114] "Noctes Ambrosianæ." Works of Professor Wilson, vol. i. pp. 136-138.
[115] "Fauna Boreali-Americana." Mammalia, p. 87.
[116] Appendix to "Second Voyage," p. xii.
[118] _Dublin Nat. Hist. Review, 1858_, p. 166.
[119] "Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal," p. 176.
The boy who used to read, long ago, "The Three Hundred Animals," was ever familiar with "_the Lion's Provider_," as the menagerie showmen, even now, somewhat pompously style this hungry howler of the desert.
The jackal is a social kind of dog, and a pack of hungry or excited jackals can howl in notes fit to pierce the ears of the deafest. He is a mean, starved-looking creature in ordinary circumstances, seeming as if his social life prevented his getting what is called _a lion's_ share on any occasion.
As Burke was declaiming with great animation against Hastings, he was interrupted by little Major Scott. "Am I," said he, indignantly, "to be teased by the barking of this _jackal_, while I am attacking the royal _tiger_ of Bengal?"[121]
Another fertile subject for anecdote. Who has not some faithful black Topsy, Tortoise-shell, or Tabby, or rather succession of them, whose biographies would afford many a curious story? Professor Bell[122] has well defended the general character of poor pussy from the oft-repeated calumnies spread about it. Cats certainly get much attached to individuals, as well as to houses and articles in them. They want the lovableness and demonstrativeness of dogs; but their habits are very different, and they are strictly organised to adapt them to watch and to pounce on their prey.
As we have elsewhere remarked, and the remark was founded on observation of our eldest daughter when a very young child, "Your little baby loves the pussy, and pussy sheathes her claws most carefully, but should baby draw back her arm suddenly, and pussy accidentally scratch that tender skin, how the little girl cries! It is, perhaps, her first lesson that sweets and bitters, pleasures and pains, meekness and ferocity, are mingled in this world."[123]