ARMOUR-PLATING AND SKIN PICTURES 163 



The enclosed space alone may change into black, and so obliter- 

 ate the space and turn the ocellated rosette into a solid rosette, as 

 we see it in the Serval (Fig. 17) ; or the rosette may be so con- 

 tracted as to obliterate only the middle spots, as in most Leopards. 

 Finally, we may have the whole surface changed either into a jet 

 black, obliterating all traces of rosettes, as in the black Leopard of 

 Johore, and the jet black domestic Cat ; or the surface may be 

 changed into a uniform rich isabelline colour, as in the adult Puma ; 

 or the ground colour inside and outside the rosettes may change to 

 white, as in the Snow Leopard. A further obliteration of all colour 

 produces the albino domestic Cat. 



In all this theorising about the descent of resetted, spotted, and 

 striped animals from carapaced ancestors, it should be distinctly 

 understood that I do not in the least maintain that the Jaguar or 

 Leopard descended from this particular Glyptodon^ or that particular 

 Dcedicurus. What I mean is that the Jaguar and Leopard bear on 

 their skins the stamp of having descended from a carapaced 

 ancestor, which had bony rosettes something like those of a Glyp- 

 todont. How many bone-rosettes, and of what exact shape they 

 were, in this conjectural ancestor, I am not in a position to say. 



In this discussion the whole evidence is circumstantial, for no 

 one has ever seen the passage of a Glyptodon's carapace into the 

 rosettes of the Jaguar. One would indeed require to have lived a 

 good bit of time to witness a Glyptodon changing into a Jaguar, 

 considering that Cuvier found no appreciable difference between 

 the skeletons of the ancient mummified animals of Egypt and 

 their representatives which lived 3000 or 4000 years later. 1 



In these and similar investigations circumstantial evidence is 

 the only kind of evidence obtainable, and it is very valuable. The 

 connecting gradations must be filled up by the imagination. 



1 ' Science and Hebrew Tradition ' Lecttires on Evolution, p. 77. 



