Tiger being a generic name give to several animals of different species, we shall being with distinguishing them fro each other. The leopards and panthers, which are so often confounded, have both been called Tigers by most travellers. The ounce, a small species of panther, which is easily tamed, and used for hunting in the East, has been mistaken for the panther, and received the general denomination of Tiger. The lynx, and the lion’s provider, by the Turks called Karackoulah, and by the Persians Siyahgush, have sometimes also received the appellation of Panther or of Ounce. All these animals are common in Africa, and in the southern regions of Asia. But the true tiger is a rare animal, little known to the antients, and not well described by the moderns. Aristotle makes no mention of the tiger: Pliny only observes of him, that he is an animal of astonishing fleetness,* and adds, that he was much more rarely to be met with than the panther, because Augustus first presented a tiger to the Romans at the dedication of the theatre of Marcellus, while, in the days of Scaurus, this Ædile presented 150 panthers,+ and afterwards Pompey exhibited 410, and Augustus [87] 420, at the public spectacles of Rome. But Pliny gives not a single mark by which the tiger is to be distinguished: Oppian* and Solinus, who wrote after Pliny, appear to have been the first who mention that the tiger is characterized by long stripes, and the panther by round patches. This is, indeed, one of the marks which distinguish the true tiger not only from the panther, but from several other animals that have been called tigers. Strabo+ quotes Megasthenus on the subject of the true tiger, who tells us, that, in India, there are tigers twice as large as the lion. Thus the only notices we have from the antients concerning this remarkable animal, are, that he is extremely ferocious and fleet; that his body is marked with long stripes; and that he exceeds the lion in magnitude. The moderns, as Gesner, and other naturalists, who mention the tiger have added nothing to the little that had been observed by the antients.
All those skins which have short hair and roundish and distinct spots, have been called tigers skins; and travellers, deceived by this false denomination, have indiscriminately named every ferocious animal, thus spotted, by the appellation of tigers. The academy of science were like- [88] wise misled by this prejudice; and, to all the spotted animals they dissected, though very different from the genuine tiger, they have given the same denomination.
The most general cause of the multiplication of equivocal and vague terms in natural history, has arisen, as shall be more fully demonstrated in the following article, from the necessity of giving names to the unknown productions of the New World. Many animals, merely from some slight resemblances to those of the Old Continent, though very different, both in species and dispositions, have had the same names imposed on them. The error of calling every spotted animal a tiger, began in Europe, and was transported to America, where it was doubly augmented. For spotted quadrupeds being discovered in this new country, they were instantly called tigers, though they neither belonged to the species of the true tiger, nor to any of those Asiatic or African animals who had falsely received that name. Hence, in place of one species of tiger, their number has been increased to nine or ten; and, consequently, the history of those different animals has been greatly embarrassed, what belongs to one species being often ascribed to another.
To dispel the confusion arising from these false denominations, especially among the animals which have been commonly called tigers, I shall give a comparative enumeration of quadrupeds, in which [89] I shall distinguish, 1. Those which are peculiar to the Old World, and existed not in America upon its first discovery; 2. Those which are peculiar to the New, and were unknown in the Old World; 3. Those which are common to both continents, without being transported by men from the one to the other. For this purpose, we must collect into one view what lies scattered in the works of the first historians of America. [90]
[Note: The text for “Animals Peculiar to the Old World” continues immediately after this paragraph. I separated the articles to make the file sizes a bit more manageable].
* Animal tremendae velocitatis; Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. 8. c. 18.
+ Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. 8. c. 17 [back to page 87].
* See Oppian, lib. 1. de venatione, ubi ait: Orynges alios decorari toeniis oblongis tigrium instar, alios vero rotundis ut panthera.—Tigres (ait Solinus) bestias insignes maculis notae et pernicitas memorabiles reddiderunt, sulvo intent, hoc sulvum nigricantibus sementis inter-undatum, [sic].
+ Strab. Lib. 15 [back to page 88].