SPOTTED AND STRIPED MAMMALS 45 



shaped figure, with an ocellus in the middle ; if the ocellus were 

 closer to one end, the figure would become not unlike the outline 

 of a tadpole, like those on the Tiger skin of Fig. 23. 



No. 2, Fig. 29, is a diagram intended to show the transforma- 

 tion from simple stripes to spindle-shaped ocelli. 



I think I have said enough (and perhaps more than enough) 

 regarding the striping of Tigers to show that it is simply an 

 extreme modification of the Jaguar and Leopard rosettes. But 

 if the reader should have any doubts about the descent of stripes 

 from spots, a glance at the small Cat skins of Fig. 27 ought to 

 convince him that the view I have taken of the genesis of stripes, 

 in the Cat tribe at least, is in all probability the right one. We 

 see separate spots passing into beady stripes and finally into 

 Tiger stripes on the hind-legs. On the shoulders of the small 

 Cats the striping is so fine that it is rather a brindling. 



Then in the Natural History Museum, among the Cat family, 

 there are numerous specimens which show simple spots, mixtures of 

 spots and stripes, and simple stripes either transverse or longitudinal, 

 and also transitions from the one kind of marking to the other. 



I might have dispensed with such a multiplicity of facts in 

 support of what I said ; but to the general reader, who may not 

 be in the habit of seeing at a glance the obviousness of a con- 

 clusion, they may be useful in bringing home to him the truth 

 that stripes are evolved from rosettes. 



If now we turn to other animals, such as the Deer and the 

 Antelope, we shall find that spots and stripes are interchangeable 

 and intermixable. 



Fig. 30 shows the spotted young one of a Deer in the 

 Zoological Gardens ; the adult showing no spots whatever.^ 



' In the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art there is a good specimen of a 

 young spotted Wapiti {Cervus Canadensis). 



