FELIDsE 



55 



south as the Gulf of Lepanto and the Isthmus of Corinth, having 

 as its western boundary the River Potamo and the Pindus mountains. 

 The whole of the evidence relating to the existence of Lions in 

 Europe, and to their retreat from that continent shortly before the 

 commencement of the Christian era, has been collected in the article 

 on " Felts spelcea " in Boyd Dawkins and Sandford's British Pleisto- 

 cene Mammalia (1868). Fossil remains attest a still wider range, as 

 it is shown in the same work that there is absolutely no osteologi- 



\ 





Fio. 224. Lion and Lioness, after a drawing by Wolf in Elliot's Monograph of the Felicke. 



cal or dental character by which the well-known Cave Lion (F. 

 spelwa), so abundantly found in cave-deposits of the Pleistocene age 

 in Western Europe, can be distinguished from the existing F. leo. 



At the present day the Lion is found in localities suitable to its 

 habits, and where not exterminated (as it probably was in Europe) 

 by the encroachments of man, throughout Africa from Algeria to 

 the Cape Colony, and in Mesopotamia, Persia, and some parts of 

 the north-west of India. According to Blanford, 1 Lions are still 

 very numerous in the reedy swamps bordering the Tigris and 

 Euphrates, and also occur on the west flanks of the Zagros moun- 

 tains and the oak-clad ranges near Shiraz, to which they are 

 1 Zoology and Geology oj Eastern Persia (1876). 



