THE BRITISH LION. 
157 
Thus there is proof that the animal ranged throughout 
France and Grermany, as far south as the basin of the Upper 
Danube, and throughout Italy as far as the extreme point of 
Sicily. It has not, up to the present time, been discovered in 
Scandinavia, Denmark, or Eussia. There is no reason to believe 
that any of the deposits in which it occurs throughout this great 
area are of other than Post-glacial or Quaternary date. Never- 
theless it would be rash, in the present state of our knowledge 
of the pliocene Felidse of those countries, to affirm that the 
Cave Lion was not an inhabitant of Europe during the Pliocene 
epoch. 
There is also unexpected proof that the Cave Lion inhabited 
North America, during the Post-glacial or Quaternary epoch. 
In 1852* Dr. Leidy figured and described a left lower jaw from 
the neighbourhood of Natchez, Mississippi, which he considered 
to possess leonine affinities, and yet to differ from any recent or 
extinct feline species. The two most characteristic points 
which it presents are the great depth of the ramus and the 
forward position of the ramal process underneath premolar 
four. In all other respects it coincided remarkably with the 
jaw of the Cave Lion. The minor differences brought forward 
by Professor Leidy vanish away at the comparison of the large 
series of leonine jaws in the Taunton Museum. Mr. Sandford, 
however, recently discovered an abnormal jaw of the Cave Lion 
in Mr. Beard’s collection from Bleadon Cave in Somersetshire, 
that presents exactly the same characters by which the American 
jaw differed from the normal jaw of the Cave Lion, the ramal 
process occupying precisely the same forward position, and the 
depth of its ramus measuring 2*77 inches beneath premolar 
four, as compared with the corresponding measurement of 2*5 
in Dr. Leidy’s figure. In the latter, moreover, the thickness of 
the covering 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 betw^een the American (F. atrox^ Leidy) 
and the Cave Lion, and to believe 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 
Bear, Bison, Horse, and Mastodon, as well as to extinct repre- 
sentatives of the South American fauna of the time, Megalonyx 
and Mylodon. 
There is nothing a 'priori unreasonable in the idea that a 
* Trans. Amer. Philosoph. Soc. Philadelphia,’’ vol. x. N.S., pp. 319, 
321, PI. 34. 
