36 MOSTLY MAMMALS 



resembling the perpendicular lights and shadows of a 

 grass-jungle, are probably for the purpose of breaking 

 up the outline of the body. The clouded markings of 

 the marbled cat and clouded leopard assimilate with the 

 boughs on which these species repose, and the spotted 

 coat of the Indian desert-cat renders the creature almost 

 invisible in stony deserts. To suppose that all such 

 adaptations have been produced in the regular order re- 

 quired by the theory is as incredible as in the last case. 

 There is, moreover, the circumstance that the young of the 

 uniformly coloured lion and puma are spotted, thus giving 

 an instance of the direct passage from a spotted to a 

 plain-coloured form without the intervention of a trans- 

 versely striped stage, precisely the same thing also 

 occurring in the case of the deer. It should, however, 

 be mentioned that lion cubs occasionally have their tails 

 ringed like that of a tiger, instead of spotted in leopard- 

 fashion ; so that in this particular instance transverse 

 stripes are intercalated between the spotted and the uni- 

 formly coloured stages. 



If we look for the most primitive mammals with longi- 

 tudinal dark stripes over the greater part of the upper 

 surface, such types being wanting in the marsupials, we 

 shall find them in the striped mongooses (Galidictis) of 

 Madagascar, already mentioned. And as the civets and 

 their allies are certainly the most generalised of existing car- 

 nivora (although the modern members of that order occupy 

 a somewhat high position), this case tends, in a certain 

 degree, to lend some support to the view that longitudinal 

 dark stripes are an early type. The rarity of animals 

 exhibiting this pattern over all their bodies, coupled with 

 the frequent retention of a longitudinal dorsal stripe, are 

 likewise in some degree confirmatory of the same view. 



