234 



DOMESTICATED ANIMALS AND PLANTS 



than in North America, where the wild cat and lynx inhabited 

 the primeval forests in more or less abundance. Indeed, the 

 domestic cat possesses a wide range of wild congeners the world 

 over, beginning with the tiger and the lion and shading off, 

 through the jaguar, the leopard, and the puma, to its nearer 

 relatives, the marbled cat {Felis mannorata) of the eastern 

 Himalayas and Burma ; the golden cat {Fclis temnmteki) of 

 northern India, Tibet, and the Malay Peninsula ; the fishing 

 cat {Felis viverrina) of India; the spotted leopard cat {Felis ben- 

 galensis), and a great number and variety of similar species be- 



Fig. 46. The European and the American wild cats respectively. Clearly our 

 domesticated cat is more closely related to the former 



longing to the same general region. Besides these there are the 

 yellowish-gray Caff re or Egyptian cat {Felis caffra)^, from which 

 the European species, which he greatly resembles, has doubtless 

 sprung ; the common wild cat {Felis eat?is), which has inhabited 

 England since the days of the mammoth, and at one time cov- 

 ered all Europe except the southern portion ; the pampas cat 

 of South America, the jungle cat of India, and so on into the 

 lynxes, the hunting leopard, and other more distant relatives. 



All wild animals of the cat kind are universally hated by 

 hunters because of their stealth and innate savagery, for, whether 

 tiger or leopard, panther, puma, jaguar, lynx, or wild cat, they 



1 Also called Felis caligata and Felis maniculata. 



