The Tower Menagerie : $b comprising the natural history of the animals contained in that establishment; with anecdotes of their characters and history.Bennett, Edward Turner
History
The Tower Menagerie : $b comprising the natural history of the animals contained in that establishment; with anecdotes of their characters and history.
The Llamas congregate together in considerable herds on the sides of
the Andes, and generally in the colder and more elevated regions. When
the Spaniards first arrived in Peru they were the only beasts of burden
employed by the natives; and even at the present day, when horses have
become so excessively common, they are usually preferred for passing the
mountains, on which their sureness of footing, exceeding even that of
the mule, gives them a manifest superiority. Generally speaking they are
quiet, docile and timid; but they occasionally exhibit much spitefulness,
especially if teased or ill treated. Their mode of evincing this is very
peculiar, and consists in darting their saliva through their nostrils
with considerable force. Like all the other Ruminants they subsist
entirely on vegetables. Those in the Tower Menagerie have a particular
fondness for carrots; and if one of these is abstracted from them while
they are eating, their anger is immediately roused, and they spit, as
it is termed, with the greatest vehemence, covering with their saliva a
surface of three or four yards in extent. One of the animals in the cut
is represented in the act.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE MALAYAN RUSA-DEER.
_CERVUS EQUINUS._ CUV.
The Deer constitute a numerous and beautiful group of Ruminants, which
are readily distinguished by the graceful symmetry of their form, by
their long and slender, but firm and sinewy, legs, by their broad and
pointed ears, and by the comparative shortness of their tails; but more
especially by the generally large and branching horns which ornament the
heads of the males. Like all the ruminating animals, with the exception
of those mentioned in the preceding article, they are furnished with
eight cutting-teeth in the lower jaw, opposed to a callous and toothless
surface in the upper; and with expanded, flat, and deeply bifurcated
hoofs, constituting two distinct and apparent toes, above which they
have also the rudiments of two others. Some of the species have canine
teeth in the upper jaw, generally in the males alone; and they have all
six molars on each side. In the greater number of them the nostrils are
surrounded by a naked muzzle; and most of them are also provided with a
sinus or sac, of greater or less extent, immediately beneath the inner
angle of the eye, called the sub-orbital sinus, the _larmier_ of the
French zoologists.
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