FELIS SPELEA. 163 
teristic of the fossils of the great feline animal could be 
referred neither to the existing Lion or Lioness, nor to 
the Tiger, still less to the Leopard or Panther; but that it 
more resembled, in the curvature of the lower border of the 
under-jaw, the Jaguar. 
M. Goldfuss, having subsequently obtained an almost 
entire fossil cranium of the large extinct feline animal, de- 
scribed it under the name of Felis spelea ;* which name 
Cuvier adopted in the later edition of his great work,+ 
adding to the distinctions which Goldfuss had pomted out 
between the fossil and the skulls of the existing Felines, in- 
cluding the Jaguar, that the suborbital foramen appeared 
to be smaller, and placed further from the margin of the 
orbit than in the existing Lion or Tiger. Although in the 
uniform and gentle curve of the upper contour of the fossil 
skull, it resembles more that of the Leopard than any of 
the larger Felines, Cuvier subsequently speaks of the extinct 
species as ‘‘a Lion or Tiger.” 
There is a constant and well-marked character, of which 
Cuvier appears not to have been aware, by which the skulls 
of the existing Lion and Tiger may be distinguished from 
one another; it consists in the prolongation backwards, in 
the Lion, of the nasal processes of the maxillary bones to 
the same transverse line which is attained by the upper ends 
of the nasal bones ; whilst, in the Tiger, the nasal processes 
of the maxillary bones never extend nearer to the transverse 
line attained by the upper ends of the nasal bones than one- 
third .of an inch, and sometimes fall short of it by two- 
thirds of an inch, where they terminate by an obtuse or 
truncated extremity, whilst m the Lion they are pointed.t 
It is very desirable that this character should be deter- 
* Nova Acta Acad. Nat. Cur. tom. x. pt. ii. p. 489, tab. 45. 
+ Ossemens Fossiles, vol. iv. 1823, p. 449. 
t See Proceedings of the Zoological Society, January, 1834. 
M 2 
