The muzzle of all the cats is very short and broad, and at the level of the orbits shows a peculiar reversal of the hair from the rest of the head, for instead of being like that of a dog in which the hair slopes all the way _upwards_ from the tip of the snout to the rest of the head, it breaks away from this normal type and passes in a uniform close stream to the edge of the wet muzzle. The arrows in Fig. 36 show this change. One asks at once the reason for such an unexpected trend of the hair on a small area, when the carnivores in other groups have a uniform slope towards the head from their more pointed muzzles. The cats have discarded the earlier family pattern and for a reason which does credit to their self-respect. Very few naturalists know, or have described so well the meticulous care which animals take of their coats, as Miss Frances Pitt did in the _National Review_, where she gave a delightful account of “How Animals Clean Themselves.” The toilet of the lion she did not discuss, perhaps for prudential reasons. Her account dealt chiefly with a number of small hairy mammals and lower forms of life. Watch a dog cleaning his coat and you will see the ingenious way in which he pushes his head and body forward as he lies on some rough surface such as grass, or our best drawing-room mat. _He_ can thus clean his snout and other parts, but no cat adopts so rough and ready a method. We know how long and how scrupulously she licks her fur to clean it in the parts she can reach and cleans her head with her paws. But with such a broad snout as she and the larger cats possess she cannot clean the short surface of it in the manner of the dog. So she “dresses” this little surface in a special way of rubbing it from the neighbourhood of her eyes _forward_ with her paws. And so we may assume does the chieftain of her clan finish off this little bit of his toilet. We are so much accustomed to dwell on the naturally clean habits of a domestic cat that without such an account as Miss Frances Pitt has given we should have hesitated to transfer the character for personal cleanliness from the domesticated to the wild cat. If this be not the sole reason for the course of the hair-stream I have described, I am at a loss to imagine any other. Lion’s Neck. On each side of the lion’s neck where it joins the shoulder there is a well-developed whorl, and this as a rule is extended forwards into a feathering (Figs. 36 and 37), and ends in a crest on the lower part of the side of the neck. It is common also in tigers and leopards. This is, as elsewhere, a record of strong and oft-repeated action in powerful muscles which lie beneath it, and bears witness to the great functional activity of the fore-limbs as compared with the hind-limbs in these three formidable cats. It is not an animal pedometer, but may perhaps be termed an _ergograph_. [Illustration: Fig. 37.--Back of Lion, showing reversed area of hair with whorl at A. Feathering B. Crest C.]