Crossword-Solution: FELID 5 letters, 21 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 9

The fauna, probably lender the influence of climatic and orographic changes, underwent a complete transformation; the mammoth, the cave-bear, the megaceros, and the large felidæ died out, the hippopotamus was no longer seen, except in the heart of Africa; the reindeer and other mammals that love to frequent the regions of perpetual snow, retired to the extreme north; and in their place appeared our earliest domestic animals, the ox, the sheep, the goat, and the dog.

Filhol describes no fewer than seventeen varieties of the genus _Cynodictis_, which fill up all the interval between the viverine animals and the bear-like dog _Amphicyon_; nor do I know any solid ground of objection to the supposition that, in this _Cynodictis-Amphicyon_ group, we have the stock whence all the Viveridæ, Felidæ, Hyænidæ, Canidæ, and perhaps the Procyonidæ and Ursidæ, of the present fauna have been evolved.

One species of tapir, to represent the elephants and rhinoceroses of the Old World; three small species of deer, taking the places of deer, antelopes, buffaloes, sheep, and goats of the other continent; three species of large Felidæ; one peccari, and a wild dog, with opossums, ant-eaters, armadilloes, sloths, squirrels (the only rodents which approach ours),[176] capybaras, pacas, agoutis, and monkeys, comprise all the quadrupeds of equatorial America.

The claws of the Felidæ are extremely strong, sharp, and crooked; and all four-feet are furnished with them, five before, and four behind; and the most effective system of muscular contrivance not only gives such force to the fore-paws, that a blow from one of these will fracture a man's skull, but keeps these claws from touching the ground, and enables the animal to draw them back into a sheath.

Many species of Felidæ have bred in various menageries, although imported from various climates and closely confined.