and External Characters of the Hunting Leopard. 421 
more strongly sloped than in some other forms of Felide, 
e. g., Felis manul and F. pardina, but the slope of the upper- 
side of the cranium is unusually steep, and is accompanied by 
the deflection of the basicranial axis, so as to form a more 
obtuse angle with the plane of the palate than is observable 
in any other species of the family. 
A marked peculiarity lies in the set of the teeth, very 
noticeable when the jaws are closed (fig. 1). There is then 
no space behind the upper canine. The obliteration of this 
space, present to a varying degree in all other species of 
Felide, arises from the correlation of three features :— 
(1) The anterior portion of the mandible carrying the canine 
is not elevated, the edge of the alveolus of that tooth being ina 
line with the alveoli of the cheek-teeth ; (2) the first premolar 
of the mandible and the first large premolar of the maxilla 
are set comparatively close to the lower and upper canines 
respectively, so that the lower premolar in question, together 
with the minute first premolar (pm?) of the maxilla, blocks 
the space behind the upper canine; (3) the cheek-teeth of the 
maxilla overlap those of the mandible externally to such an 
extent that the point of the median blade of the upper 
carnassial reaches about one-third of the distance between 
the alveolar border and the inferior edge of the mandible, 
Nevertheless, in other members of the Felidz the extent to 
which the postcanine space is developed varies enormously. 
It is largest in f’. nebulosa, smallest apparently in F’. pardalis ; 
and, with respect to this character, there is less difference 
between Acinony# and F. pardalis than between the latter 
and Ff, nebulosa. 
Other dental characters are the relative smallness of the 
canines, the narrowness of the alveolar border of the pre- 
maxillee, and the suppression of the cusp on the sma]Jl inner 
lobe of the upper carnassial, so that the anterior blade of the 
lower carnassial, as I have elsewhere recorded*, slides over 
the median blade of the upper almost to the palate. This 
modification contributes to the close fitting of the upper and 
lower cheek-teeth mentioned above. 
One or two other characters of the skull may be briefly 
alluded to:—(1) The jaws are narrowed anteriorly, the 
planes of the lower half of the maxille inclining obliquely 
forwards and inwards almost in the same line as the sub- 
orbital portion of the zygomata, which are less salient than in 
most other species of Felidee. (2) The nasals are long and 
posteriorly wide, the width of each in a line with the tip of 
the short nasal process of the frontal being approximately as 
* Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist., Sept. 1916, p. 276. 
