creature the spots, it is said, give the impression of flecks of sunlight broken up by foliage. On the other hand, the self-coloured Cats of a sandy to earthen hue assimilate in tint with a sandy or stony soil. The stripes of the Tiger, it is thought, approximate to the tall parallel stems of grasses and other plants in the dense cover in which it lives. In favour of these views is undoubtedly the fact that in other mammals and other animals belonging to quite different groups the same four plans of coloration are met with. Spots and cross stripes are found in the Marsupials; the young Tapir is spotted while the adult is self-coloured, and so forth. This last fact, however, serves to illustrate another view which has been put forward in explanation of these characteristic markings of the Felidae. Eimer has come to the conclusion that there is and has been a regular series of steps in the evolution of these markings. The primitive condition was, he thinks, a longitudinally striped one; the stripes then broke up into spots, and the spots rearranged themselves as transverse stripes; the self-coloured Puma and Lion are a final stage in this gradual evolution. In support of this is the fact that spots precede self-coloration in the individual growth of these animals. The exact sequence of these markings is, however, contradicted by Dr. Haacke's observations upon a certain Australian fish which is cross striped when young and longitudinally striped when adult, a precise reversal of what ought to occur on Eimer's view.
The Felidae are almost universally distributed with the exception, of course, of Australia and a good deal of the Australian region; the headquarters of the group are undoubtedly in the tropics of the Old World.
The characteristics of a few species of the Cat tribe will now be given. As there are at any rate forty-five species, this survey will have to be somewhat incomplete.
The Lion, F. leo, differs from all other species by the mane of the male. It is an inhabitant of Africa, India, and certain parts of Western Asia. Within the historic period it ranged into Europe. According to Sir Samuel Baker those of us who have not seen the Lion in his native haunts have never seen a really magnificent specimen of the brute; but other travellers disagree, and state that a captive Lion is often a finer animal—by reason, of course, of good feeding. Unlike the majority of Cats, the Lion
