﻿162 PLEISTOCENE MAMMALIA. 



Lion were the enormous depth of the ramus, and the forward position of the ramal 

 process underneath Premolar 4, as compared with our type specimens of the man- 

 dibles of the latter animal. 1 In all other respects it was identical in form, those minor differ- 

 ences brought forward by Dr. Leidy vanishing away at the comparison of the large 

 series of leonine jaws in the Taunton Museum. The subsequent discovery, however, 

 of a lower jaw 2 of the Cave Lion in Mr. Beard's Collection from Bleadon Cave has 

 caused us to reconsider our conclusion, since it presents exactly those characters by which 

 we believed Felis atrox to differ from the Cave Lion, its ramal process occupying pre- 

 cisely the same abnormal forward position, and the depth of its ramus measuring 

 277 inches beneath Premolar 4, as compared with a corresponding measurement of 

 2 '5 inches of Dr. Leidy 's figure. In the latter, moreover, the thickness of the coat of 

 peroxide of iron is not taken into account. We are, therefore, compelled to admit that 

 specific difference has not yet been proved to exist between the American and the Cave 

 Lion, and to believe, on the evidence before us, that the jaw in question really belongs to 

 the latter animal. Contrary to what might have been expected, it differs more from that 

 of the great South- American Felis, the Jaguar, in the enormous development of the 

 ramal process, than does that of the existing Lion of the Old World. 



The associated remains found at Natchez belong to Ursus, Bison, Equus, and Mas- 

 todon, as well as to representatives (now extinct) of the South American Fauna of the 

 time, Megalonyx and Mylodon. 



There is nothing a priori unreasonable in the idea that a geographical variety of the 

 Cave Lion should have lived in North America during the Post-glacial or Quaternary 

 period of that area, when we recollect that the Mammoth, Bison, and Horse, which have 

 not yet been proved to differ specifically from those found in the Europseo-Asiatic Post- 

 glacial series, have a similar range. There is no doubt of the specific identity of the 

 American with the European Mammoth. Bison Americanus has been found in the fossil 

 state at Big-bone Lick, Kentucky. The Bison associated with the American Lion at 

 Natchez is considered by Dr. Leidy ('Smithsonian Contrib. to Knowledge,' 1852, vol. 

 v, art. iii) to belong to a new species, Bison latifrons, Leidy ; but since we cannot lay 

 hold of even one point of difference between it and the enormous Bisons of Post-glacial 

 Europe, we cannot think with him that Baron Cuvier was wrong in ascribing the remains 

 to the Aurochs ( c Oss. Foss./ 4to, t. iv, p. 50, pi. iii, fig. 2). We cannot detect a specific 

 difference in the comparison of Equus Americanus with the many forms of Equus fossilis in 

 Europe. 



So far, then, as we have any evidence at all, the animal, is a link in the chain 

 that binds the Post-glacial Fauna of North America with that of Europe and Northern 

 Asia, and we may fairly argue that the American Lion bore the same relation to that of 

 the European Caves as the Waipiti to the Red Deer, the American to the European 



1 See ' Brit. Pleist. Mam.,' article " Felidse," pi. i, figs. 1, 2 a. 



2 'Cat. Taunt. Mus.,' No. 1. Felis, No. 16 and p. 7. 



