THE LEOPARD AND THE CHEETAH 243 



which show no tendency to form rosettes, ocellated spots, 

 cross-bands, or stripes. The female is sHghtly smaller than 

 the male, the sexual discrepancy in size being much less 

 than in the true cats. No color differences are apparent 

 between the sexes. Newly born young have long, woolly 

 hair and show little evidence of spotting or color marks 

 except the dark tail rings and tear stripes on the face. 

 When half grown, at an age when they are shedding their 

 milk molars, they are still somewhat woolly but are spotted 

 by small black spots quite uniformly over the back. The 

 spots on the feet, throat, and base of the tail show a distinct 

 tendency at this age to form cross-bars as in the African 

 wildcat, F. ocreata. In a fossil condition the cheetah is 

 known from the Pliocene of India. At the present time a 

 single living species, jubatus, is known which covers an ex- 

 tensive geographical area ranging from the Cape of Good 

 Hope north through eastern Africa and the Nile Valley to 

 Arabia, Persia, and India. It is lacking from the Congo 

 forest area and the wooded portion of the west coast of 

 Africa and from all forest tracts within its general range. 

 The cheetah, like the other large cats, shows considerable 

 geographical variation in the coloration of its coat and may 

 be divided into several recognizable races on color charac- 

 ters. Authors have, however, generally failed to find dis- 

 tinctions between the Indian or the African. Much of the 

 failure to recognize such long-known or described races as 

 jubatus and venaticus is due to the absence of specimens 

 for comparison. Wild-killed cheetahs of the Indian race, 

 venaticus, are very rare in collections, most of the specimens 

 representing this race being captive ones used for hunting, 

 which have lost their slight color characters through the 

 changed environment. 



The Indian cheetahs may, as a rule, be distinguished 

 from the African by the absence of the short mane on the 

 neck and the ruff on the under side of the tail, the smaller 

 body size and less numerous spots, the small, interspaced 

 spots between the larger being absent. The African animal 

 splits up into at least four fairly well-defined geographical 

 races. In the Cape region occurs a small-bodied form, ju- 

 batus, rather like the Indian, with the spots well separated, 

 their color not predominating over the ground-color. Far- 



