SOME REMARKS ON THE PLEISTOCENE MAMMALIA. 5
Lion.—The remains of lion found in British Pleistocene de-
posits seem to belong to the species Felis leo, which still survives
in Africa and some of the warmer parts of Asia ; but most of
the fragments represent animals which were larger and stouter
than most of those now living.7 The latter fact is interesting
when it is remembered that the fossil jaguar found in a cave in
temperate Patagonia is also larger and stouter than the ordinary
jaguars now living in the warmer parts of South America.8
Even at the present day the tiger which exists in the cold region
of the Altai Mountains in Siberia, is finer than the race of the same
species which roams through the hot jungles of India. The late
Dr. W. T. Blanford pointed out that the cold north must be
regarded as the original home of the tiger, because there is no
word for the animal in the old Sanskrit language, and it therefore
cannot have reached India until after that language had become
obsolete. The case of the lion is probably parallel, and the real
home of the great cats was most likely a temperate rather than a
tropical region. The lion, of course, survived in S.E. Europe
until historic times, and it did not disappear from W. Europe
much before the end of the Pleistocene period. It has been found
both at Clacton9 and at Charing Cross,10 with the apparently
early and warm or temperate fauna ; it also occurs both at Ips-
wich11 and under London (Fleet Street) associated with the typical
Mammoth which represents a colder fauna. The remains of
three individuals from Ipswich, however, show traces of
affliction by a kind of rheumatism.
Hyaena.—Like the European Pleistocene lion, the con-
temporaneous hyaena was a larger and stouter animal than its
surviving representatives in warmer regions. It is noteworthy
for the effectiveness of its sectorial (or cutting) teeth, and there is
now no doubt that it must be regarded as a robust variety of
the spotted hyaena, Hyaena crocuta, which still lives in Africa
to the south of the Sahara. This conclusion is interesting,
because the present North African hyaena, which spreads into
Asia, is the striped species, H. striata—a very distinct form.
7 W. Boyd Dawkins and W. Ayshford Sanford, The British Pleistocene Mammalia, vol. i.
(Palaeontographical Society, 1866-69).
8 A. S. Woodward, Proc. Zool. Soc., 1900, p. 74.
9 S. Hazzledine Warren, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. lxxix. (1923), p. 618.
10 A. S. Woodward, Geol. Mag., 1917, p. 423.
11 Nina F. Layard, "The Stoke Bone-bed, Ipswich," Proc. Prehistoric Soc., E. Anglia, vol. iii.
(1920), p. 216, fig. 47.