432 



THE CAT. 



[CHAP, 



the past, most of which have disappeared without leaving any yet 

 discovered trace of their existence. Some, however, have left their 

 remains in caves and superficial deposits, while others are made 

 known to us by fossil remains. Indeed, a variety of fossil CATS 

 NOW EXTINCT have been described, but as to many of them there is 

 necessarily great uncertainty, since our whole knowledge of them 

 reposes upon perhaps a lower jaw or one or two teeth. New fossil 

 forms are now being so rapidly discovered in North America, that a 

 complete enumeration of extinct species and a correct appreciation 

 of their affinities must be a work of the more or less remote future. 

 From what is already known, there can be no doubt but that 

 some cat-like creatures, very different from any now living, once 

 existed. 



In the first place, a variety of fossils have been found which 

 differ from existing cats in no way that would warrant their being 

 placed in any other genus than Fells. Such are cats that have 

 been found in the newer miocene or oldest pliocene of the Siwalik 

 Hills* 



Such, again, are others varying in size from a wild cat to a 

 hysena, which have been found by Professor Gaudryf at Pikermi in 

 Greece, and many of those which were before described by Professor 

 De Blainville,f and by M. Paul Gervais, such as Felis Christolii 

 (about the size of the Serval). 



The great cat known as the so-called " Cave Lion," Felis Spelcea,\\ 

 which lived in England in middle and late pleistocene times,^" is a 

 well known extinct feline form. 



But besides these fossils, thus referrible to the existing genus, 

 there are a variety of other remains which cannot be so referred. 



15. Thus the remains of certain large cats have been found in 

 pliocene and miocene, and even in eocene deposits, which differ from 

 any existing cats in the enormous size of their upper canine teeth. 

 The crowns of these teeth were laterally compressed and trenchant, 

 with strong serrations along the margins a character but feebly 

 developed in any of the large living cats. 



Further, the mandible may be widened, from above downwards, 

 the better to protect such enormously developed teeth. These tusks 

 were indeed so large in some species that the jaws could not be 

 opened beyond them so as to allow them to be used for biting. They 

 could therefore only have been made use of as daggers, the anim'al 

 striking with them with its mouth closed. Such forms must be grouped 

 apart under a distinct generic name the name MACHJERODUS. 

 This genus had a very wide range, remains of ifc having been found 

 in Europe, India, and America, both North and South. In some 



* E.g., the Felis crislata of Cautley 

 and Falconer. 



t See his " Animaux Fossiles de 1'At- 

 tique," p. 116, plate 17. 



J Osteographie, Felis. 



See his "PaleontologieFrai^aise." 



|| Owen, British Fossil Mammals, 

 p. 161 ; and W. Boyd Dawkins in 

 Palseoiit. Society, 1869, cxviii. 



TT As to this and other geological 

 terms, see below, Chapter XIV., 6. 



