162 PLEISTOCENE MAMMALIA. 
Lion were the enormous depth of the ramus, and the forward position of the ramal 
process underneath Premolar 4, as compared with our type specimens of the man- 
dibles of the latter animal.1_ In all other respects it was identical in form, those minor differ- 
ences brought forward by Dr. Leidy vanishing away at the comparison of the large 
series of leonine jaws in the Taunton Museum. The subsequent discovery, however, 
of a lower jaw’ of the Cave Lion in Mr. Beard’s Collection from Bleadon Cave has 
caused us to reconsider our conclusion, since it presents exactly those characters by which 
we believed Fe/is atrox to differ from the Cave Lion, its ramal process occupying pre- 
cisely the same abnormal forward position, and the depth of its ramus measuring 
2°77 inches beneath Premolar 4, as compared with a corresponding measurement of 
2°5 inches of Dr. Leidy’s figure. In the latter, moreover, the thickness of the coat of 
peroxide of iron is not taken mto account. We are, therefore, compelled to admit that 
specific difference has not yet been proved to exist between the American and the Cave 
Lion, and to believe, on the evidence before us, that the jaw in question really belongs to 
the latter animal. Contrary to what might have been expected, it differs more from that 
of the great South-American Felis, the Jaguar, in the enormous development of the 
ramal process, than does that of the existing Lion of the Old World. 
The associated remains found at Natchez belong to Ursus, Bison, Equus, and Mas- 
todon, as well as to representatives (now extinct) of the South American Fauna of the 
time, Megalonyx and Mylodon. 
There is nothing @ priori unreasonable in the idea that a geographical variety of the 
Cave Lion should have lived in North America during the Post-glacial or Quaternary 
period of that area, when we recollect that the Mammoth, Bison, and Horse, which have 
not yet been proved to differ specifically from those found in the Europzo-Asiatic Post- 
glacial series, have a similar range. There is no doubt of the specific identity of the 
American with the European Mammoth. ison Americanus has been found in the fossil 
state at Big-bone Lick, Kentucky. The Bison associated with the American Lion at 
Natchez is considered by Dr. Leidy (‘Smithsonian Contrib. to Knowledge, 1852, vol. 
v, art. ill) to belong to a new species, Bison Jatifrons, Leidy ; but since we cannot lay 
hold of even one point of difference between it and the enormous Bisons of Post-glacial 
Europe, we cannot think with him that Baron Cuvier was wrong in ascribing the remains 
to the Aurochs (‘ Oss. Foss.,’ 4to, t. iv, p. 50, pl. iii, fig. 2). We cannot detect a specific 
difference in the comparison of Hyuus Americanus with the many forms of Aguus fossilis in 
Kurope. 
So far, then, as we have any evidence at all, the animal, is a link in the chain 
that binds the Post-glacial Fauna of North America with that of Europe and Northern 
Asia, and we may fairly argue that the American Lion bore the same relation to that of 
the European Caves as the Waipiti to the Red Deer, the American to the European 
' See ‘ Brit. Pleist. Mam.,’ article ‘‘ Felidee,” pl. i, figs. 1, 2 a. 
2 «Cat. Taunt. Mus.,” No. 1. Felis, No. 16 and p. 7. 
