36 MOSTLY MAMMALS 
resembling the perpendicular lights and shadows of a 
grass-jungle, are probably for the purpose of breaking 
up the outline of the body. The clouded markings of 
the marbled cat and clouded leopard assimilate with the 
boughs on which these species repose, and the spotted 
coat of the Indian desert-cat renders the creature almost 
invisible in stony deserts. To suppose that all such 
adaptations have been produced in the regular order re- 
quired by the theory is as incredible as in the last case. 
There is, moreover, the circumstance that the young of the 
uniformly coloured lion and puma are spotted, thus giving 
an instance of the direct passage from a spotted to a 
plain-coloured form without the intervention of a trans- 
versely striped stage, precisely the same thing also 
occurring in the case of the deer. It should, however, 
be mentioned that lion cubs occasionally have their tails 
ringed like that of a tiger, instead of spotted in leopard- 
fashion; so that in this particular instance transverse 
stripes are intercalated between the spotted and the uni- 
formly coloured stages. 
If we look for the most primitive mammals with longi- 
tudinal dark stripes over the greater part of the upper 
surface, such types being wanting in the marsupials, we 
shall find them in the striped mongooses (Galidictis) of 
Madagascar, already mentioned. And as the civets and 
their allies are certainly the most generalised of existing car- 
nivora (although the modern members of that order occupy 
a somewhat high position), this case tends, in a certain 
degree, to lend some support to the view that longitudinal 
dark stripes are an early type. The rarity of animals 
exhibiting this pattern over all their bodies, coupled with 
the frequent retention of a longitudinal dorsal stripe, are 
likewise in some degree confirmatory of the same view, 
