162 FEL1D.E. 



species in high northern latitudes,* and in all the inter- 

 mediate countries to the equator ; and there is no genus of 

 Mammalia in which the unity of organization is more closely 

 maintained, and in which, therefore, we find so little ground 

 in the structure of a species, though it may most abound at 

 the present day in the tropics, for inferring its special adap- 

 tation to a warm climate. A more influential, and, indeed, 

 the chief cause or condition of the prevalence of the larger 

 feline animals in any given locality, is the abundance of 

 the vegetable-feeding animals in a state of nature, with tn"e 

 accompanying thickets or deserts unfrequented by man. 

 The Indian Tiger follows the herds of Antelope and Deer 

 in the lofty Himalayan chain, to the verge of perpetual snow. 

 The same species also passes that great mountain barrier, 

 and extends its ravages, with the Leopard, the Panther, 

 and the Cheetah, into Bocharia, to the Altaic chain, and 

 into Siberia as far as the fiftieth degree of latitude ; prey- 

 ing principally, according to Pallas, on the wild Horses and 

 Asses.-f 



It need not, therefore, excite surprise that indications 

 should have been discovered, in the fossil relics of the 

 ancient Mammalian population of Europe, of a large feline 

 animal, the contemporary of the Mammoth, of the tichor- 

 rhine Rhinoceros, and of the gigantic Cave Bear and 

 Hysena, and the slayer of the Oxen, Deer, and equine 

 quadrupeds that so abounded during the same epoch. 



These indications were first discovered in the bone caves 

 of Germany ; and Cuvier, in his usual masterly review of 

 the materials which were accessible up to the period of 

 his Memoir on the Cave Carnivora in the Annales 

 du Museum for 1806, concludes that the most charac- 



* " Lynx boreale frigus non timet," Pallas, Zoographia Rosso- Asiatica, i. p. 1 3. 

 t 11. pp. 7 19. 



