THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
which superseded the pachyderms as they dwindled, the race 
of true cats, endowed with qualities better fitted to the new 
conditions — among others, better brains. These forms con- 
centrated during the early Miocene into the genus Felis, which 
; has outlasted its saber-toothed cousins and flour- 
Rise of Cats. , 
ishes to-day. ‘According to present knowledge,” 
remarks Woodward, ‘‘they [the Felide] seem to have gradually 
evolved in the Old World, first migrating to North America 
at the close of the Pliocene period, and thence eventually 
reaching South America.” Many extinct species are to be 
found in all the later deposits, some of which lasted until exter- 
minated by man, e.g. the “cave lion,” whose bones lie in 
the caverns and river gravels of Europe, sometimes bearing 
marks of human weapons; but it was probably not different 
from the African lions of to-day. In the western United States, 
about the same time, there roamed several tigerlike cats, in 
whose killing the Stone-age men of this country may have had 
a part. They were the equal or perhaps the superior of the 
lion, at any rate were far more formidable than our modern 
pumas or jaguars. 
Puma, Jaguar, and Tiger Cats 
No better example of this splendid feline race could be taken 
than our American:‘puma. Until the invasion of his domain by 
civilization, he possessed the whole continent from near Hudson 
Bay to the Strait of Magellan. No other land animal whatever 
has so great a north-and-south range; and when one thinks 
of the wide contrasts in climate and conditions generally to 
which it must accommodate itself, one would expect to find a 
bewildering variety of forms. On the contrary, it would be 
hard to find a species so uniform as this. There is little or 
nothing by which any man might say whether a certain skin 
came from the Orinoco jungles, or the Patagonian pampas, 
or from some cold canyon in the Rockies. 
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