the Panther, there are only six or seven ranges of these

roses.

The natural habits of the leopard, like those of all the cat tribe, are compounded of ferocity and cunning. He preys upon the smaller animals, such as antelopes, sheep, and monkeys;-and he is enabled to secure his food with great success, from the extraordinary flexibi lity of his body. The leopards in the Tower, who have a tolerably large cage, bound about with the quickness of a squirrel, so that the eye can hardly follow their movements. In Africa, they are sometimes found of extraordinary size and rapacity. Their relative size principally distinguishes the leopard and the panther, the latter being ordinarily the larger. M. Cuvier considers them distinct species; although they are doubtless often mistaken by travellers, from their great similarity.

We have been favored, by a gentleman who was formerly in the civil service at Ceylon, with the following description of an encounter with a leopard or panther, which in India are popularly called tigers :

"I was at Jaffna, at the northern extremity of the Island of Ceylon, in the beginning of the year 1819; when, one morning, my servant called me an hour or two before my usual time, with, 'Master, master! people sent for master's dogs-tiger in the town!' Now, my dogs chanced to be some very degenerate specimens of a fine species, called the Poligar dog, which I should designate as a sort of wiry-haired greyhound, without scent. I kept them to hunt jackals; but tigers are very different things; by the way, there are no real tigers in Ceylon; but leopards and panthers are always called so, and by ourselves as well as by the natives. This turned out to be a panther. My gun chanced not to be put together; and while my servant was doing it, the collector, and two medical men, who had recently arrived, in consequence of the cholera morbus having just then reached Ceylon from the continent, came to my door, the former armed with a fowling-piece, and the two latter with remarkably blunt hog-spears.

* Cuvier, Règne Animal.

They insisted upon setting off without waiting for my gun, a proceeding not much to my taste. The tiger, (I must continue to call him so) had taken refuge in a hut, the roof of which, as those of Ceylon huts in general, spread to the ground like an umbrella; the only aperture into it was a small door, about four feet high. The collector wanted to get the tiger out at once. I begged to wait for my gun; but no-the fowling-piece (loaded with ball, of course) and the two hog-spears were quite enough. I got a hedge-stake, and awaited my fate, from very shame. At this moment, to my great delight, there arrived from the fort an English officer, two artillery-men, and a Malay captain; and a pretty figure we should have cut without them, as the event will show. I was now quite ready to attack, and my gun came a minute afterwards. The whole scene which follows took place within an inclosure, about twenty feet square, formed, on three sides, by a strong fence of palmyra leaves, and on the fourth by the hut. At the door of this the two artillerymen planted themselves; and the Malay captain got at the top, to frighten the tiger out, by unroofing it-an easy operation, as the huts there are covered with cocoa-nut leaves. One of the artillerymen wanted to go in to the tiger, but we would not suffer it. At last the beast sprang; this man received him on his bayonet, which he thrust apparently down his throat, firing his piece at the same moment. The bayonet broke off short, leaving less than three inches on the musket; the rest remained in the animal, but was invisible to us: the shot probably went through his cheek, for it certainly did not seriously injure him, as he instantly rose upon his legs, with a loud roar, and placed his paws upon the soldier's breast. At this moment the animal appeared to me to about reach the centre of the man's face; but I had scarcely time to observe this, when the tiger, stooping his head, seized the soldier's arm in his mouth, turned him half round, staggering, threw him over on his back, and fell upon him. Our dread now was, that if we fired upon the tiger, we might kill the man; for a moment there was a pause, when his comrade attacked the beast exactly in the same manner as the gallant fellow him

self had done. He struck his bayonet into his head; the tiger rose at him-he fired; and this time the ball took effect, and in the head. The animal staggered backwards, and we all poured in our fire. He still kicked and writhed; when the gentlemen with the hog-spears advanced, and fixed him, while some natives finished him, by beating him on the head with hedge-stakes. The brave artilleryman was, after all, but slightly hurt; he claimed the skin, which was very cheerfully given to him. There was, however, a cry among the natives that the head should be cut off: it was; and, in so doing, the knife came directly across the bayonet. The animal measured scarcely less than four feet from the root of the tail to the muzzle. There was no tradition of a tiger having been in Jaffna before; indeed, this one must have either come a distance of almost twenty miles, or have swum across an arm of the sea nearly two miles in breadth; for Jaffna stands on a peninsula in which there is no jungle of any magnitude.

The leopard of India is called by the natives the "Tree Tiger," from its habit of ascending a tree when pursued, or for the purpose of enabling it to spring securely on its prey. It is doubtless able to effect this ascent, by the extraordinary flexibility of its limbs, which give it the power of springing upward;--for, in the construction of the feet, it has no greater facilities for climbing than the lion or the tiger. It cannot clasp a branch like the bear, because the bone called the clavicle is not sufficiently large to permit this action. The Indian hunters chase the leopard to a tree; but even in this elevated spot it is a task of great difficulty to shoot him; for the extraordinary quickness of the creature enables him to protect himself by the most rapid movements. The Africans catch this species in pitfalls, covered over with slight hurdles, upon which there is placed a bait. In some old writers on Natural History there are accounts of the Leopard being taken in a trap, by means of a mirror, which, when the animal jumps against it, brings down the door upon him. This story may have received some sanction from the disposition of the domestic cat, when young, to survey her figure n a looking glass.

VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES--THE CEDAR OF LEBANON.

In addition to the durability of its timber, the cedar is, in its appearance, the most majestic of trees; and when it stands alone in a situation worthy of it, it is hardly possible to conceive a finer vegetable ornament. Its height in this country has seldom equalled the taller of the larches, though it has nearly aproached to it; but the very air of the tree impresses one with the idea of its comparative immortality. There is a firmness in the bark and a stability in the trunk, in the mode in which that lays hold of the ground, and in the form of the branches and their insertion into the trunk, not found in

any other pine, scarcely in any other tree. The foliage, too, is superior to that of any other of the tribe, each branch being perfect in its form: the points of the leaves spread upwards into beautiful little tufts, and the whole upper surface of the branch, which droops in a graceful curve toward the extremity, having the semblance of velvet. The color is also fine; it is a rich green, wanting the bluish tint of the pine and fir, and the lurid and gloomy one of the cypress.

The description of the cedar of Lebanon by the prophet Ezekiel is fine and true:-"Behold the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon, with fair branches, and of an high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs.

His boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long. The fir trees were not like his boughs, nor the chesnut trees like his branches; nor any tree in the garden of God like unto him in beauty."

Whether the cedars of Lebanon were thinned to exhaustion by the fourscore thousand axes of the King of Israel, or whether they have decayed in consequence of some variation of climate, or other physical change in the country, it is impossible to say; but modern travellers represent that very few now exist, though some are of immense bulk-about thirty-six feet in circumference, and quite undecayed.

Various specimens of the cedar of Lebanon are mentioned as having attained a very great size in England. One planted by Dr. Uvedale, in the garden of the manor-house at Enfield, about the middle of the seventeenth century, had a girth of fourteen feet in 1789; eight feet of the top of it had been blown down by the great hurricane in 1703, but still it was forty feet in height. At Whitton, in Middlesex, a remarkable cedar was blown down in 1779. It had attained the height of seventy feet; the branches covered an area of one hundred feet in diameter; the trunk was sixteen feet in circumference at seven feet from the ground, and twenty-one feet at the insertion of the great branches twelve feet above the surface. There were about ten principal branches or limbs, and their average circumference was twelve feet. About the age and planter of this immense tree its historians are not agreed, some of them referring its origin to the days of Elizabeth, and even alleging that it was planted by her own hand. Another cedar, at Hilling. don, near Uxbridge, had, at the presumed age of 116 years, arrived at the following dimensions: its height was fifty-three feet, and the spread of the branches ninety-six feet from east to west, and eighty-nine from north to south. The circumference of the trunk, close to the ground, was thirteen feet and a half; at seven feet it was twelve and a half; and at thirteen feet, just under the branches, it was fifteen feet eight inches. There were two principal branches, the one twelve feet and the other ten feet in girth. The first, after a length of eighteen inches, divided into two arms, one eight feet