56 NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



length and fulness of this member; so he distinguished 

 his new discovery by an allusion to its shortness, 

 styling his find Leopai'dus brachyurus in the descrip- 

 tion which he forwarded to the Zoological Society. 

 Dr. Gray, writing on the Formosan animal in 1867, 

 called it Neofelis brachyurus; recent naturalists, 

 however, have agreed to consider it merely as a 

 short-tailed and local race of the rimau dahan. The 

 great range of variation amongst the Felidae renders 

 them very difficult to study, and even to-day 

 naturalists are not yet agreed as to the number of 

 true species in existence. Many of the cat tribe 

 occur in two phases, dark and pale; individuals of 

 the same species may differ in size, in markings, in 

 ground colour, and even, as we have just seen, in 

 the length or shortness of the tail. Hodgson many 

 years ago supposed the small Himalayan race of the 

 clouded tiger to be a distinct animal, which he 

 called Felis macroce hides ; thus naturalists fond of 

 making new species might divide the present one into 

 a Sumatran, a Formosan, and a Himalayan form. 



It is a remarkable fact that there are many 

 animals which, although in their native land but 

 little known to Europeans, nevertheless turn up 

 with considerable regularity in the lists of animals 

 offered for sale by the wild beast merchants. Such 

 species as the addax, bubaline, and leucoryx ante- 

 lopes are often exhibited in the zoological gardens of 

 Europe; the sing-sing waterbuck may be seen in 



