CHAPTER XV. 



THE PEDIGREE AND OKI GIN OF THE CAT. 



§ 1. In the preceding chapters, the creature which has been 

 selected as a type of mammalian hack-boned animals, has been 

 represented from various points of view. Its anatomy, physiology, 

 psychology, taxonomy, and hexicology, have been successively 

 treated of and the processes of indirklual development — the series of 

 changes gone through by each individual of the cat species in reach- 

 in"- maturity — have been noticed. It only now remains^ to study 

 the development of the species— ihoii is to say, the " pedigree and 

 origin," both of the cat considered as a species, and of the whole 



family of Felidce. , i , • i o 



To trace, as far as may be, the series of forms through which the 

 existing group of cats may, with most reason, be believed to be 

 descended, is, in this sense, to trace the cat's pedigree. To investi- 

 gate the probable causes which have evolved such forms and 

 o-overned such process of development, is to investigate the cat's 



ORIGIN. 



^ 2. That the various kinds of cats, and the whole cat group, 

 have been evolved through the orderly operation of pmvers divinely 

 implanted in the material creation, is a statement the truth of which 

 can now, it seems, be hardly denied by any consistent persons Avho 

 are not prepared to maintain that with the birth of every very ex- 

 ceptionally formed kitten a direct intervention of the First Cause 

 takes place — an intervention such as does not otherwise occur in the 

 orderly sequence of purely natural phenomena. 



^ 3. In order to investigate the question of the cat's pedigree, or 

 phj/lof/cni/, its relation to other animals must be carefully borne in 



mind. 



In the thirteenth chapter it was pointed out that the cats are most 

 nearly related to the Foussa {Cryptoprocta), and in a less degree to 

 the other members of the family Vivcrridw. That they have a more 

 general affinity to the whole sub-order ^hroidea, and a still more 

 general one to the whole order Carnirora, and ultimately to 

 mammals and to all backboned animals — beyond which they can be 

 said to have no special affinities at all. 



The ancestors then of the cat family must be sought for amongst 



