Volume 1

The viviparous quadrupeds of North America / By John Audubon ... and ... the Rev. John Bachman ... [Text].

  • John James Audubon
Date:
1846-1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The viviparous quadrupeds of North America / By John Audubon ... and ... the Rev. John Bachman ... [Text]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The Wild Cat pursues his prey with both activity and cunning, sometimes bounding suddenly upon the object of his rapacity, sometimes with stealthy pace, approaching it in the darkness of night, seizing it with his strong retrac- tile claws and sharp teeth, and bearing it olf to his retreat in the forest. The individual from which our figure was drawn had been caught in a steel-trap, and was brought to us alive. We kept it for several weeks; it was a fine male, although not the largest we have seen. Like most of the predacious animals, it grew fat in confinement, being regularly fed on the refuse parts of chickens and raw meat, as well as on the common brown rat. The Bay Lynx, (as this animal is sometimes called,) is fond of swampy, retired situations, as well as the wooded sides of hills, and is still seen oc- casionally in that portion of the Alleghany mountains, which traverses the States of Pennsylvania and New York. It is abundant in the Cane- brakes, (patches or thickets of the Miegia Macrosperma, of Michaux, which often extend for miles, and are almost impassable,) bordering the lakes, rivers, and lagoons of Carolina, Louisiana, and other Southern and South Western States. This species also inhabits the mountains and the undu- lating or rolling country of the Southern States, and frequents the thickets that generally spring up on deserted cotton plantations, some of which are two or three miles long, and perhaps a mile wide, and afford, from the quantity of briars, shrubs, and young trees of various kinds which have overgrown them, excellent cover for many quadrupeds and birds. In these bramble-covered old fields, the “ Cats” feed chiefly on the rabbits and rats that make their homes in their almost impenetrable and tangled recesses; and seldom does the cautious Wild Cat voluntarily leave so comfortable and secure a lurking place, except in the breeding season, or to follow in very sultry weather, the dry beds of streams or brooks, to pick up the cat- fish, &c., or cray-fisti and frogs that remain in the deep holes of the creeks, during the drought of summer. The Wild Cat not only makes great havoc among the chickens, turkeys, and ducks of the planter, but destroys many of the smaller quadrupeds, as well as partridges, and such other birds as he can surprise roosting on the ground. The hunters often run down the Wild Cat with packs of fox-hounds. When hard pressed by fast dogs, and in an open country, he ascends a tree with the agility of a squirrel, but the baying of the dogs calling his pursuers to the spot, the unerring rifle brings him to the ground, when, if not mortally wounded, he fights fiercely with the pack until killed. He will, however, when pursued by hunters with hounds, frequently elude both dogs and huntsmen, by an exercise of in- stinct, so closely bordering on reason, that we are bewildered in the at-
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