“While he succeeds in finding food in the forests and gorges of the high mountains, he does not attempt to shift his quarters, but lives alone with his mate, and betrays his presence by horrible howlings, audible at a great distance. He only quits his chosen solitude at the last extremity, and mounts on a branch, where he crouches at full length among the foliage, which half hides without incommoding him. With eye and ear on the watch, he remains whole days motionless, with eyes half closed, and in a state of apparent sleep, which is only the more dangerous, for then he is most completely cognisant of all that is passing around him. The Lynx lives by stratagem. Like all Cats, he has not a particularly fine sense of smell, and his pace is not sufficiently rapid to allow him to pursue his prey. His patience, and the skill with which he creeps noiselessly, bring him close up to his victim. More patient than the Fox, he is less cunning; less hardy than the Wolf, he leaps better and can resist famine longer. He is not so strong as the Bear, but keeps a better look-out, and has sharper sight. His strength resides chiefly in his feet, jaws, and neck. He prefers to make his hunting as easy as possible, and only chooses his victim when food abounds. Every animal he can reach with one of his bounds, which rarely miss their aim, is lost and devoured; if he misses, he allows the animal to escape, and returns to crouch in his post of observation, without showing his disappointment. He is not voracious, but he loves warm blood, and this passion makes him imprudent.... If he comes upon a flock of Goats or Sheep, he approaches, dragging his belly along the ground, like a Snake, then raises himself with a bound, falls on the back of his victim, breaks its neck or cuts its carotid with his teeth, and kills it instantaneously. Then he licks the blood which flows from the wound, rips open the belly, devours the entrails, gnaws off a part of the head, neck, and shoulder, and leaves the rest.”[54] So bloodthirsty is his nature, that a single individual has been known to destroy forty Sheep in a few weeks. Fortunately for the inhabitants, this plague is now nearly extinct in Central Europe. It is extremely rare in the Alps, though it was tolerably common within the last fifty years; and in the forests of Thuringia, only two have been found during the present century. [Illustration: CARACAL.]