This, as Mr. Jerdon observes, “is the Common Wild Cat all over India, from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, and from the level of the sea to 7,000 or 8,000 feet of elevation. It frequents alike jungles and the open country, and is very partial to long grass and reeds, sugar-cane fields, corn-fields, &c. It does much damage to game of all kinds, Hares, Partridges, &c., and quite recently I shot a Peafowl at the edge of a sugar-cane field, when one of these Cats sprang out, seized the Peafowl, and, after a short struggle (for the bird was not dead), carried it off before my astonished eyes, and, in spite of my running up made good his escape with his booty. It must have been stalking these very birds, so immediately did its spring follow my shot.” Besides being so common in India, the Chaus is found all over Africa, especially in the north. It is of a yellowish-grey colour, inclining to reddish in some parts, and white below. The muzzle and the limbs have dark stripes, and the tail is more or less ringed with black, but the greater part of the body is unspotted. It is interesting to notice that the annulation of the tail is most distinct in the young. We have elsewhere remarked that the young of all the one-coloured Cats (Lion, Puma, &c.), are more or less indistinctly spotted or striped. The ears are slightly tufted, so that this species, like the Spotted Wild Cat, approaches the Lynxes. The length, of the head and body together is twenty-six inches; of the tail, nine or ten; the height at the shoulder fourteen or fifteen. A black variety is to be met with in some parts of India. THE COMMON LYNX.[53] In the Lynx we come again to an animal of historical interest, for this creature was well known to the ancients. It is mentioned by Pliny as having first appeared in the Amphitheatre at Rome in the time of Pompey, having been brought to the great city from Gaul, where, at that time, it was probably very abundant. No doubt it would cause grand sport in the arena, for it is an extremely savage beast, and capable of holding its own against animals many times its own size. The Lynx was also one of the animals sacred to Bacchus, and is sometimes represented, instead of the Leopard, as drawing the car of this deity. But the Lynx of the ancients has, as Buffon remarks, quite the character of a fabulous animal. It was supposed “that its sight was so piercing as to penetrate opaque bodies, that its water had the marvellous property of becoming a solid body, a precious stone, called _lapis lyncurius_!” This last legend, as Brehm suggests, probably arose from the fact that the amber brought from Liguria was called _lapis ligurius_, and that the Greek merchants, knowing nothing about such a place as Liguria, corrupted _ligurius_ into _lyncurius_, and, of course, connected it with _Lyncus_. A survival of the superstition about the Lynx being able to see through walls still exists in our common expression, “Lynx-eyed.”