. Animal Life and the World of Nature; A magazine of Natural History. ingered. As like as not the Leopards of England are the cheetah. The name,however (in early English lihhard), soon began to be misapplied to the panther, as thelatter—far commoner—became better known. We regained knowledge . of the cheetahthrough Western India, where it is seini-domesticated, as it was formerly by Egyptians,Arabs, and Persians. Curiously enough cliita or clihita (the origin of cheetah) inHindustani merely ineans panther, so that the confusion in nomenclature betweenthese two large spotted cats (which generic
. Animal Life and the World of Nature; A magazine of Natural History. ingered. As like as not the Leopards of England are the cheetah. The name,however (in early English lihhard), soon began to be misapplied to the panther, as thelatter—far commoner—became better known. We regained knowledge . of the cheetahthrough Western India, where it is seini-domesticated, as it was formerly by Egyptians,Arabs, and Persians. Curiously enough cliita or clihita (the origin of cheetah) inHindustani merely ineans panther, so that the confusion in nomenclature betweenthese two large spotted cats (which generically are so wide apart) remains hopelesslyconfounded. Although so much associated with India, the cheetah is really more Africanthan Asiatic in its range at the present day, though it is found fossil in the Panjab * Both words. t I have shown elsewhere in writing about Tunisia that the cheetali still lingers in the region of the Shats, just northof the Tunisian Sahara. It is very common in Fezzan, and was anciently found in Central Tnsi a~d in the Tripolitaine,. liAiii iniutuijraijh hij W. P. Vaitdu, luUVitts Iaik. _J 90 Animal Life (Siwalik hills), and no doubt, like so many other modern mammalian types—lions, tigers,antelopes, giraffes, oxen, apes, and man himself—originated in that laboratory of creation,India. At the present time the cheetah is found in all the uncivilised parts of Africawhich are of an arid character yet able to sustain gazelles and other antelopes. Thusit inhabits Southern Tunis, Tripoli, and the outskirts (north, south, and east) and theoases of the Sahara desert; Kordofan, tlie Egyptian Sudan, Darfur, Nileland, the lowlandsof Abyssinia, Somaliland, the drier parts of East and East Central and, though nowpartially exterminated, nearly all South and South-West Africa. South of the Zambesi,on the colder uplands, the cheetah develops a variety which may be on its way to forma new species—the woolly cheetah, with thicker fur and spots that, instead
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