162 FELID&. 
species in high northern latitudes,* and in all the inter- 
mediate countries to the equator; and there is no genus of 
Mammalia in which the unity of organization is more closely 
maintained, and in which, therefore, we find so little ground 
in the structure of a species, though it may most abound at 
the present day in the tropics, for inferring its special adap- 
tation toa warm climate. A more influential, and, indeed, 
the chief cause or condition of the prevalence of the larger 
feline animals in any given locality, is the abundance of 
the vegetable-feeding animals in a state of nature, with the 
accompanying thickets or deserts unfrequented by man. 
The Indian Tiger follows the herds of Antelope and Deer 
in the lofty Himalayan chain, to the verge of perpetual snow. 
The same species also passes that great mountain barrier, 
and extends its ravages, with the Leopard, the Panther, 
and the Cheetah, into Bocharia, to the Altaic chain, and 
into Siberia as far as the fiftieth degree of latitude; prey- 
ing principally, according to Pallas, on the wild Horses and 
Asses. f 
It need not, therefore, excite surprise that indications 
should have been discovered, in the fossil relics of the 
ancient Mammalian population of Europe, of a large feline 
animal, the contemporary of the Mammoth, of the tichor- 
rhine Rhinoceros, and of the gigantic Cave Bear and 
Hyena, and the slayer of the Oxen, Deer, and equine 
quadrupeds that so abounded during the same epoch. 
These indications were first discovered in the bone caves 
of Germany; and Cuvier, in his usual masterly review of 
the materials which were accessible up to the period of 
his Memoir on the Cave Carnivora in the Annales 
du Muséum for 1806, concludes that the most charac- 
* “ Lynx boreale frigus non timet,” Pallas, Zoographia Rosso-Asiatica, i. p. 13. 
+ 1b. pp. 7—19. 
