Ocelot

“ OCELOT (Mexican Flalocelotl, literally field-jaguar, from Flalli, field, and ocelotl, tiger, jaguar) , an American member (Felix pardalis) of the family Felidae, ranging from Arkansas in the north to Paraguay. The species is subject to great racial variation. The fur has, however, a tawny yellow or reddish grey ground colour, marked with black spots, aggregated in streaks and blotches, or in elongated rings enclosing areas rather darker than the general ground-colour. ”

“ A FLAMINGO AND HIS ENEMY THE OCELOT.
The harmless and peaceful flamingo has many enemies besides man. Beasts of prey are prowling abroad at night, and pounce upon these birds while they are sleeping in their marshy homes. In the great South American swamps the ocelot is one of its most formidable foes. The ocelot is a very small member of the panther family, and is found in Mexico and all through the American tropics. ”

“ As soon as the young are able to see and crawl, their savage nature is apparent, and they cannot be tamed. They are not often hunted, but when accidentally met with by the hunter are despatched as quickly as possible.
In length the Ocelot rather exceeds four feet, of which the tail occupies a considerable portion. The height averages about eighteen inches. On account of the beauty of the fur the skin is valued for home use and exportation, and is extensively employed in the manufacture of various fancy articles of dress or luxury. ”

“ To sum up: in ancient America the human form was employed to represent quadripartite division and the complete finger-and-toe count=20, and as such became emblematic of the quadriform plan of universal application. Owing to a variety of circumstances and suggestions arising from language, the figure of a quadruped=ocelot was adopted as a symbol of the State by some tribes and the form of an eagle by others, the inference being that the ocelot was identified with the cult of the earth and night and the eagle with the cult of heaven and day. ”

“ The leopards also vary, and let us suppose their variation at length assumes so marked a form,—in the ocelot,—that we class it as a new species. There is nothing in this hypothesis but what is strictly consonant with analogies; it is only extending to Species what we know to be the fact with respect to Varieties; and these Varieties which we know to have been produced from one and the same Species are often more widely separated from each other than the lion is from the puma, or the leopard from the ocelot. ”

“ The mongoose and its near relative, the ichneumon of northern Africa, are gray and a little larger than a rat. All make interesting pets.
Ocelot (Felis pardalis) is a species, with several varieties, which is confined to the New World, and ranges from Arkansas in the north to Patagonia. These animals are inhabitants of forests, and very expert in climbing trees. Their prey consists in great part of birds. They are beautifully marked and colored. The coloration varies considerably, but the ground tint is always a rich red or tawny color ”

“ In the forest region is also found the most beautiful of the medium-sized cats. This is the Ocelot, which corresponds somewhat to the servals, but is not the least like a lynx, as {53}the servals are. It is entirely a tree-cat, and lives on birds and monkeys. ”

“ Whistle with four ocelot-like heads, alligator ware—1/1.
The prevalence of bird forms is due no doubt to the resemblance of the notes of primitive whistles to the notes of birds. The shape of the bird is also exceptionally convenient, as the body accommodates the air chamber, the tail serves as a mouthpiece, and the head is convenient for the attachment of a cord of suspension. A great variety of forms were modeled and range from the minute proportions of the smallest humming bird to those of a robin. ”

“ In many cases the animals copied can be identified, but in others they cannot—perhaps from our lack of knowledge of the fauna of the province, perhaps from carelessness on the part of the artist or from the tendency to model grotesque and complicated shapes. The following creatures can be recognized: men, pumas, ocelots, armadillos, eagles, owls, ducks, parrots, 161 several varieties of small birds, alligators, crabs, and scorpions. ”

“ And as the day and the night by land have their relentless freebooters, so the sea too has its eagle king; for the Osprey, with its nest on a high rock, hovers over the open sea, and, dashing into the deep, returns with a large fish in its claws; and, as it tears the flesh from under the glittering scales, reminds us that there is no spot on the earth in which some bird does not seek its prey. ”

“ You should take on board with you several skins of oxen, and, if the wind rises and threatens the vessel with danger, all who wish to escape envelope themselves each in a skin, sew up this skin so as to make it as far as possible water-tight, then throw themselves into the sea, and flocks of the great eagles called griffins, thinking that they are really oxen, will descend and bear them on their wings to some mountain or valley, there to devour their prey. ”

“ The young seal, the osprey, the great northern diver were but a few of the creatures he told me of, which, when living, were a source of delight to every one who watched them, whose lives had been wantonly taken in the estuary by gentlemen sportsmen. Stories equally sad and shocking were told me by other lovers of nature and observers of wild life at other points on the coast, of how every rare and beautiful species, every owl, buzzard, harrier, chough, hoopoe and many other species, had been slaughtered by men who call themselves sportsmen and gentlemen. ”

“ When the latter rises from the water, with a fish in its grasp, forth rushes the Eagle in pursuit. He mounts above the Fish-Hawk, and threatens it by actions well understood, when the latter, fearing perhaps that its life is in danger, drops its prey. In an instant, the Eagle, accurately estimating the rapid descent of the fish, closes his wings, follows it with the swiftness of thought, and the next moment grasps it. The prize is carried off in silence to the woods, and assists in feeding the ever-hungry brood of the Eagle. ”

“ Hi! It was done in an instant. At a moment when the roll brought him on top, and when the otter was shifting her own hold for another, and more deadly, which might have "put him to sleep" forever, he miraculously twisted and writhed, eel-fashion, and with one mighty wrench—a good strip of his skin and fur had to go in that pull, but it couldn't be helped—he had broken the other's hold, leapt clear of the clinch, and was gone. ”

“ Nothing could exceed the elegance and ease with which the otter performed the most extraordinary and complicated evolutions in pursuit of his prey, his long, lithe body, pliant and supple as an eel’s, twisting and twining in every direction as the fish darted hither and thither, or swept in rapid circles in its efforts to escape. ”

“ Legions of water-fowl inhabited the reeds, and troops of cranes rose at the approach of the flotilla. Sometimes we saw great, big pelican kind of birds, almost as big as a man, standing contemplative on a single leg, and often on the tree-tops a fish-eagle, glorious in bronze and cream, sat sunning himself and watching for a prey. ”

“ As no ornaments are more beautiful than the ocelli on the feathers of various birds, on the hairy coats of some mammals, on the scales of reptiles and fishes, on the skin of amphibians, on the wings of many Lepidoptera and other insects, they deserve to be especially noticed. An ocellus consists of a spot within a ring of another colour, like the pupil within the iris, but the central spot is often surrounded by additional concentric zones. The ocelli on the tail-coverts of the peacock offer a familiar example, as well as those on the wings of the peacock-butterfly (Vanessa) . ”

“ Little does my lady think, as she contemplates the rich shimmer of the ebony sea-otter trimming to her new seal-skin sacque, that the quest of the former has engaged thousands of men during the last century in exhaustive deeds of hazardous peril and extreme daring, and does to-day—that the possession of the sea-otter’s coat calls for more venturesome labor and inclement exposure on the part of the hunter than is put forth in the chase of any other fur-bearing or economic animal known to savage or civilized man. ”

“ Its two huge eyes extend in two vast oval patches from the center of the top of the cranium down either side of the head to below the roots of the horns, so that these weapons really grow out from the lower part of the eyes, which are composed of several thousand ocelli each. Each ocellus is furnished with its own lid, and the apt can, at will, close as many of the facets of his huge eyes as he chooses. ”

“ There are oxen, too, like that of India, some with one horn, and others with three; the leucrocotta, a wild beast of extraordinary swiftness, the size of the wild ass, with the legs of a Stag, the neck, tail, and breast of a lion, the head of a badger, a cloven hoof, the mouth slit up as far as the ears, and one continuous bone instead of teeth; it is said, too, that this animal can imitate the human voice.
“Among the same people there is found an animal called the eale; it is the size of the river-horse, has the tail of the elephant, and is of a black or tawny colour. ”

“ In the case of the otter, however, there is often no such great discrepancy in size, and here we must suppose the victory of the mammal to be due to its superior intelligence, or its power—as, perhaps, a result of it—of taking the fish by surprise. [17] But it is not only in such cases as the above, that this curious law of the superiority of the apparently less fit may be made out, or imagined. It obtains also amongst animals differing but slightly from one another, and whose habits are identical, or nearly so. Look, for instance, at the seals themselves. ”

“ But just throw out the twelve carcasses of the oxen, and they will be so much occupied with them that they will quite forget us.’ So the youth threw out the carcasses of the oxen, and then all the wild beasts in the forest, both bears and wolves, and lions, and grim beasts of all kinds, came. But when they caught sight of the carcasses of the oxen they began to fight for them till the blood flowed, and they entirely forgot Dapplegrim and the youth. ”

“ So the youngest son had to stay with the giant for another year and a day. When the time was up, the Giant put him on the eagle again, and thirty oxen to last her for food; but before she got to the top she ate them all, and so went back again; and the young man had to stay another year and a day with the giant. At the end of the third year and a day, the Giant put him on the eagle's back a third time, and gave her three score of oxen to eat; and just when they got to the mouth of the cave, where the earth began, all the oxen were eaten, and the eagle was going back again. ”

“ I will next describe the other extreme of the series, namely, the first trace of an ocellus. The short secondary wing-feather (fig. 58) , nearest to the body, is marked like the other feathers, with oblique, longitudinal, rather irregular, rows of very dark spots. The basal spot, or that nearest the shaft, in the five lower rows (excluding the lowest one) is a little larger than the other spots of the same row, and a little more elongated in a transverse direction. It differs also from the other spots by being bordered on its upper side with some dull fulvous shading. ”

“ It is recorded that an eagle made several dives at one fish-laden osprey and, when these were not successful in making it lose its hold on the fish, the eagle dived under the smaller bird, turned over on its back, and with talons outstretched, snatched the fish from the grasp of the osprey and sailed away with it, as successful a pirate as ever sailed the seas. ”

“ In three or four minutes the bird rose without any apparent difficulty, and carried off a trout of moderate size, and instead of alighting to regale upon its prey, soared to a prodigious height, and did not descend within our view.' There can be no reasonable doubt that the bird thus described at such distant intervals of time is the same, and that the Sea Eagle of the ancients is the Osprey of the moderns. ”

“ It would be easy for some of our scientifically inclined young Americans to secure specimens from Mexico, and rearing the young from the eggs, note all their changes. Nothing is more attractive than original investigation.
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Some call the axolotl the “fish-formed siren,” as it has a fin-like membrane down the middle of the back, around the tail, and so on along part of the under portion of the body. This fin enables it to balance itself admirably in the water. Axolotls eat worms, snails, tadpoles, insects, bread-crumbs, bits of meat, or any small larvæ found in the water. ”

“ The heat of the sun was again most oppressive, shut in as we were between walls of bush, so close, that not a breath of air found its way through. The oxen were so completely done up, that they could scarcely draw the heavily-laden waggons through the deep sand, and numbers fell, to die on the roadside, or were abandoned a prey to the wild beasts and vultures. ”

“ Straight-backed, small-headed, big-barrelled oxen, as dissimilar from any wild species as can well be imagined, contended for attention and praise with sheep of half-a-dozen different breeds and styes of bloated preposterous pigs, no more like a wild boar or sow than a city alderman is like an ourang-outang. ”

“ The Argus pheasant affords a much more remarkable case. The immensely developed secondary wing-feathers are confined to the male; and each is ornamented with a row of from twenty to twenty-three ocelli, above an inch in diameter. These feathers are also elegantly marked with oblique stripes and rows of spots of a dark colour, like those on the skin of a tiger and leopard combined. These beautiful ornaments are hidden until the male shews himself off before the female. ”