EXTINCT FELINE SPECIES. 87 



Nortli and South America, there is, of course, no difficulty in explaining the presence of the same 

 type of early Carnivova in all three countries in that epoch. 



Felid.e — Great Cats, Lioxs, Tigers, Leopards, &c. (Maps 12-lG.) The Great Cats are 

 so eminent members of this family, that I may be excused for treating of them separately — not 

 as a zoological section, distindt from the small cats, but — as objects to which more human interest 

 attaches than to their smaller and less dangerous cousins. 



ExTi>fCT Species. —The Cave Lion or Cave Tiger, Felis SrEi,.EA, whose remains have been 

 found in almost every bone-cave in Europe, differed in little but size from the living tiger or 

 lion ; and even in size the difference is not great. By some it has been supposed to be the 

 species of tiger still living in Asia ; by others, it is thought to have been the existing lion.* 



De Blain\dlle attributed to it a mixture of the characters of the Lion and Tiger. Owen, 

 in his " British Fossil Mammals," named it the Cave Tiger, ha%-ing at that time had only imperfect 

 specimens to examine ; the maxillary bones, the most essential materials for the inquiry, not having 

 then come into his hands. lie pointed out, however, that the comparative prolongation of the 

 nasal processes of the maxillary bones was a good character for distinguishing the skull of the 

 existing lion from the tiger, as well as from the jaguar and its allies. The nasal i^rocesses of 

 the superior maxillary bones extend as far back as the nasal bones in the lion, but not 

 so far in the tiger. On the examination of perfect specimens of the Cave animal subsequently 

 obtained, he found that they did extend as far back, and he thence concluded that the animal was 

 not a tiger. Tliis opinion is, however, not imiversal. Dr. Giebel still (1859) sjjeaks of it as the 

 "Cave Tiger, falselj' called the Cave Lion." " Althoiigh," says he, "this Cave Tiger has a 

 most decided affinity to the tiger in skuU, skeleton, and dentition, and more widely remote fi'om 

 the lion than the living tiger ; still it has, even in the latest times, been falsely given out by 

 Gervais, Pictet, Quenstedt, and others, as a Cave Lion." The range of the living tiger is 

 certainly jnore akin to that of the deceased animal, than is that of the lion. 



Notwithstanding this, it has even been doubted whether it might not have been a leopard, 

 a spotted cat instead of a striped one. Shorter processes of the maxillary bones are present in 

 the skull of the jaguar as well as the tiger, but Cuvier speaks of the Cave species resembling the 

 leopard more than the tiger or lion, in the uniform and gentle curve of the skull. 



The animal was no doubt suited to a cold climate. Its remains have been found in abundance 

 in England, and our climate in its days must have been even more severe than that which we 

 now have. Wo infer this, not only from the very ample protection against cold, with which the 

 mammoth, in whose times it lived, was provided, but from the reindeer and musk-ox having been 

 contemporaneous inhabitants with it of England. Its other associates are either extinct, without 

 leaving us the means of judging what climate was best suited to them, or they were of that accom- 

 modating habit which can bear considerable extremes of heat and cold, and consequently furnish 

 by their presence no indication, either one way or other. But the same .species of musk-ox and 

 reindeer which then furnished food for the Cave Lion, still survive, although the former is now 

 confined to the Arctic regions, and the latter onlj' thrives in scarcely less northern lands, wliile 

 it will not live at all in our menageries. Their presence, therefore, infers a considerably .'older 

 climate in England than we now possess. 



* "The great Fki.is of the Tjriti.sh cave deiiosits is now hclicved to he no other than F. Leo." FjIA-ti!, op. cit. 53. 



