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 (Felts marmorata) of the eastern 
Himalayas and Burma; the golden cat (eles temmineki) of 
northern India, Tibet, and the Malay Peninsula; the fishing 
cat (Felis vtverrina) of India; the spotted leopard cat (Felis ben- 
galensis), and a great number and variety of similar species be- 
Fic. 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 Caffre or Egyptian cat (Fel?s caffra), from which 
the European species, which he greatly resembles, has doubtless 
sprung ; the common wild cat (Fe/?s catus), 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 Fedis caligata and Fel/s maniculata. 
