DISTRIBUTION OF THE ORDER CARNIVORA 243 



Texas, and the adjoining southern United States. Hence it 

 ranges throughout Central and South America down to the 

 Rio Negro of Patagonia. As might, however, have been 

 expected from its being essentially a forest-loving animal, 

 the Jaguar does not occur on the western side of the Andes 

 south of Ecuador. 



Thus we may take it that of the six largest and finest 

 carnivorous mammals of the existing creation, four are 

 found in the Old Continent and two others, generally inferior 

 in structure, in the New World. We need not here go 

 at length into the distribution of the smaller cats, some 

 forty or forty-five in number, as variously estimated. It is 

 sufficient to say that those of the New World are specifi- 

 cally distinct from those of the Old, except in the case of 

 the Lynxes, in which the differentiation of the Canada 

 Lynx (F. canadensis) from F. lynx of the Palsearctic 

 Region is perhaps somewhat doubtful. The cats of the 

 Ethiopian and Oriental Regions are also, as a rule, different, 

 and many of them are restricted to comparatively narrow 

 geographical limits. 



The second genus of the Cat family {Felidze) contains 

 only the Hunting Leopard, Cyntehirus jubatus, which has 

 somewhat the same distribution as the Lion. It is found 

 all over Africa, and extends throughout South-western Asia 

 and Persia into Western India up to the confines of 

 Bengal. Attention, however, should be directed to a sup- 

 posed second species of this genus, the Woolly Cheetah 

 (0. laniger), which has hitherto been only met with in 

 some of the higher districts of the Cape Colony. 



Next to the Cats we come to the Viverridse, or Civets, 

 a much more numerous group containing about seventy 

 species, usually divided into about twenty-four genera. 



