176 BRITISH MAMMALS 



being rare as compared to spotted or striped forms. This 

 coloration (often assimilative to surroundings) is, no doubt, a 

 concomitant of their stealthy life, and is more needed by the 

 solitary cats who take their prey by surprise than by bears and 

 dogs who hunt in the open. The spotting and striping is 

 generally lost by such cats, large and small, as have adopted this 

 more open existence. The cat-like markings are possessed by 

 many existing civets and hyaenas, and in a less marked degree by 

 the carnivorous Marsupials. 



The cats may have been developed from the primitive 

 Carnivores in Europe, in the strata of which continent their 

 remains are found at a more remote period (Upper Eocene) than 

 any yet discovered in Asia^ or North America. Africa has 

 received a large share of the great and notable cats, but there is 

 nothing in its palasontological history to show that it (Africa) was 

 the original home of their development, all indications pointing 

 either to Europe or Asia. Possibly, as in other cases. Western 

 Asia was the centre of radiation. In Western Asia there seem to 

 have originated the main types of modern cat — the lion, which 

 spread west and north into Europe as far as England, and south- 

 westward into Africa, its eastern range once including the whole 

 of the Indian Peninsula ; the tiger, which was evolved in Northern 

 India or Central Asia from a jaguar-like type, and spread north 

 and west perhaps as far as Russia, and north and east till it 

 reached not only the Behring Straits and New Siberia, but 

 possibly also North America ^ ; the jaguar, which once inhabited 



1 These continents have not been as well explored for their fossils as 

 Europe. The earliest form of cat found in Asia dates back to the Upper 

 Miocene, and in North America to the Lower Miocene ; but it must be 

 remembered that the term "European" as applied to fossils sometimes 

 includes Western Persia. 



^ Remains are found in North America of two great cats about the size of 

 a lion, and very lion-like in skull — Felis atrox and Felis augusta. These may 

 have been only local variations of the tiger. The tiger is known to have 

 inhabited the Arctic islands of New Siberia, and its range at the present day 

 is not so very far distant from Behring Straits. On the other hand, no 

 trace of the lion has ever been found east of Madras or north of the Punjab. 



