FELIS SPEL.EA. 163 



teristic of the fossils of the great feline animal could be 

 referred neither to the existing Lion or Lioness, nor to 

 the Tiger, still less to the Leopard or Panther ; but that it 

 more resembled, in the curvature of the lower border of the 

 under-jaw, the Jaguar. 



M. Goldfuss, having subsequently obtained an almost 

 entire fossil cranium of the large extinct feline animal, de- 

 scribed it under the name of Fells speleea ;* which name 

 Cuvier adopted in the later edition of his great work,-f- 

 adding to the distinctions which Groldfuss had pointed out 

 between the fossil and the skulls of the existing Felines, in- 

 cluding the Jaguar, that the suborbital foramen appeared 

 to be smaller, and placed further from the margin of the 

 orbit than in the existing Lion or Tiger. Although in the 

 uniform and gentle curve of the upper contour of the fossil 

 skull, it resembles more that of the Leopard than any of 

 the larger Felines, Cuvier subsequently speaks of the extinct 

 species as " a Lion or Tiger." 



There is a constant and well-marked character, of which 

 Cuvier appears not to have been aware, by which the skulls 

 of the existing Lion and Tiger may be distinguished from 

 one another ; it consists in the prolongation backwards, in 

 the Lion, of the nasal processes of the maxillary bones to 

 the same transverse line which is attained by the upper ends 

 of the nasal bones ; whilst, in the Tiger, the nasal processes 

 of the maxillary bones never extend nearer to the transverse 

 line attained by the upper ends of the nasal bones than one- 

 third of an inch, and sometimes fall short of it by two- 

 thirds of an inch, where they terminate by an obtuse or 

 truncated extremity, whilst in the Lion they are pointed.^; 

 It is very desirable that this character should be deter- 



* Nova Acta Acad. Nat. Cur. torn. x. pt. ii. p. 489, tab. 45. 

 ) Ossemens Fossiles, vol. iv. 1 823, p. 449. 

 See Proceedings of the Zoological Society, January, 1834. 



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