MEANING OF JAGUAR AND LEOPARD ROSETTES 125 



Jaguars and Leopards, the ever-recurring variations which we see in 

 living mammals would have prevented us from deciphering mark- 

 ings which are all but universal in mammals, but so strangely- 

 altered ; for who would have conjectured that the stripes of the 

 Tiger had anything to do with an armour-plated ancestral carapace ? 



The very fact of those great Armadillos having become extinct 

 may have resulted precisely from the unstretchable nature of their 

 bony skins. Their movements must have been hampered to a vast 

 degree ; and the great difference between their edentate jaws and 

 the jaws of the carnivora is enough to indicate to us the vast 

 changes that must have occurred from the days of the Glyptodonts 

 to those of the existing carnivora. 



In another place I have shown that the markings of a large 

 number of carnivora are traceable to modifications of the markings 

 of the Jaguar. I have also shown that some Horses have rosettes 

 (Fig. 56 (fl)) not very dissimilar to those imaginary ones of Fig. 70. 

 I take the dappling of Horses to mean a fusion of the ancestral 

 Horse rosettes ; and the Zebra banding again as a modification of 

 the ancestral dappling. Then the rosetting, spotting, and striping 

 of the ruminants would be further modifications of the original 

 Horse-like rosetting. In the ' old Giraffe ' we seem to have a fusion 

 of a number of rosettes to form the polygonal blotches, with broad 

 commissures ; while in the ' new Giraffe ' of Somaliland, the poly- 

 gonal blotches are approximated and the commissures are not so 

 broad. 



Further on I have endeavoured to show cause for the thinning, 

 disintegration, and the final disappearance of such massive cal- 

 careous carapaces like those of the huge extinct Glyptodonts from 

 which all this picture rosetting, spotting, blotching, striping, and 

 banding in existing animals, as I think, have come. 



After the exoskeleton was got rid of, the internal skeleton went 



