3-052-780 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Odd sketches at the Zoological Society's Gardens: the cat family, 1880. 'Our Sketches are designed, in the spirit of grotesque or comic art, to represent a few of the queerest and most obvious instances of a fanciful resemblance, in some features of corporal configuration, of aspect or gesture, between well-known inhabitants of the dens and cages and the accidental bystanders or spectators...Very different is the temper of the feline race, and of those sensitive, vigilant, and circumspect human characters, sometimes developed to extreme perfection in the female sex, whose moods and ways bear a slight apparent resemblance to that interesting animal tribe. The lion is such a lazy, sleepy brute, at least in confinement, that we can hardly know his real disposition; but the habits of the tiger, the leopard, and the puma afford to their attentive beholders a rather instructive study, while their graceful shape and movements are delightful to see. The only fault in the tiger's beauty is the fierce look of the stripes all over his face, which always reminds us of the tattooed visage of a Maori cannibal chief; the tiger's body and limbs are the finest example of symmetry'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.