Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/365

Rh Florida, the cave deposits of the Eastern States, from the Indian Territory, Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, and elsewhere. It is not at all improbable that within recent geological history more than one hundred species of cats have lived within the boundaries of the United States, some of them not becoming extinct until after the advent of man himself. The largest species yet discovered is from the famous bone beds of Phillips County, Kansas, associated with large dogs, rhinoceroses, horses, camels, etc., in the Loup Fork Tertiary. This species, though yet known from very scanty material, has been rightly named Felis maxima by Scott, and it must have measured thirteen or fourteen feet in length.



While collectively all these extinct species are known as cats, only a few are so nearly related to the living species as to be classed in the same genus Felis; and these few are the most recent of all. It will be remembered that at present only four or five species of cats are inhabitants of North America—the lynx or wild cat, ocelot, panther or mountain lion, and cougar; the ocelot and cougar found only within the southern limits. Cats are almost always inhabitants of tropical or warm, temperate regions.

The most remarkable of all the extinct feline animals are those known to naturalists as the saber-toothed cats or tigers, a group comprising the greater part of all the fossil forms. They date back to the earliest times of which we know anything about the family in North America and reach down to the time of man himself. A large