V高达机体一览表

《 V高达机体一览表》

The habits of the Ichneumons are very similar to those of the ferret. In the localities where they abound, their sanguinary disposition and predatory inclinations render them a real pest to the farm-yard, to which they pay their nocturnal visits for the purpose of destroying the poultry. They also make war upon rats, birds, and reptiles, and devour the eggs of the latter with the greatest avidity. Endowed with a remarkable degree of courage in proportion to their size, they do not hesitate to attack any animal that is not obviously more than a match for them. Even in captivity they retain much of their native spirit; and so great is their activity and determination that the individual now in the Tower actually on one occasion killed no fewer than a dozen full grown rats, which were loosed to it in a room sixteen feet square, in less than a minute and a half. They are very easily tamed, become attached to those with whom they are familiar and to the house in which they live, and will follow their master about

THE CHETAH, OR HUNTING LEOPARD.

M. Duvaucel enumerates three species of bears inhabiting India and the neighbouring islands. The first of these is the Ursus labiatus, which was strangely mistaken on its first arrival in Europe, nearly forty years ago, for a Sloth, and received from the naturalists of that day the name of Bradypus pentadactylus, or ursinus, the Five-fingered, or Ursine, Sloth; an appellation which has been productive of no little confusion in nomenclature, and is still frequently employed in menageries and exhibitions to distinguish the same animal, and sometimes even nearly related species. With the true Sloths it has nothing in common; and the only circumstance[131] which can at all account for the blunder, consists in the accidental deficiency of the incisor teeth in the animal first examined; a deficiency, which, according to the strict principles of the artificial system then adopted, was alone sufficient to convert a Bear into a Sloth. The second is the Ursus Malayanus, the Malay Bear, admirably illustrated, both with