SCHARFF 



■ — Former Occurrence of African Wild Cat in Ireland . 9 



liolds tliat the African Wild Cat was probably the chief ancestral 

 stock of our European domesticated breed. 



The domesticated cats of Europe have probably, to some extent, 

 descended from the European Wild Cat {Felis catus), which seems to 

 be an eastern species. The domestic cat of India has in a similar 

 way originated, in all probability, from one of the desert cats of 

 India, and certainly within recent times much intercrossing has 

 taken place, impairing the purity of the domestic race. As far as 

 Ireland is concerned the great majority of Domestic Cats that I 

 have examined seem to me to have had for their ancestor only 

 one species, viz., the African Wild Cat, from which it may have 

 developed, as I remarked before, quite independently in Ireland 

 itself. 



To Prof. Eoyd Dawkins and Mr. Sandford belongs the credit of 

 having first recognised the occurrence in British cave deposits of the 

 African Wild Cat. They first noticed the agi'eement of the jaw from 

 Bleadon cave (p. 182) with that of what they call Felis caffer, which 

 again is one of the numerous synonyms of Felis ocreata. They do not 

 seem to have made a special study of the lower carnassial, yet tliere 

 can be no doubt that the Bleadon jaw (plate 24, fig. 6) agrees in 

 every particular with the jaws of the Wild Cats I have described 

 from the Irish caves. 



It seems tome that the jaw fragment of Felis sp. indet., described 

 by Prof. Deperet from the Pliocene deposits of south-western France, 

 belongs also to the African Wild Cat. 



There still remains for me to make a few remarks on the 

 nomenclature adopted in this paper. In the final Report issued by 

 the Irish Cave Committee to the British Association in 1904, I had 

 used the term Felis caligata for the Irish Wild Cat, which I considered 

 of the same species as the larger African Wild Cat. But I have now 

 convinced myself that Felis caligata, Felis manicidata, Felis caffer, and 

 a good many other names which have been given to AJrican Wild 

 Cats, are really synonyms. In tlie dilemma which of these names to 

 adopt for the Irish Wild Cat, Mr. Oldfield Thomas kindly drew 

 my attention to a paper by Mr. Schwann, in which he showed — 

 and Mr. Tliomas quite agrees with his views — that the oldest 

 name is Felis ocreata. I have, therefore, adopted this name, 

 which was given to the African Wild Cat by Gmelin in 1791, and 

 so has priority over Felis caligata and others, which are more 

 recent. 



R. I. A. PKOC, VOL. XXVI., SECT. K.] B 



