The markings over the vertebræ are not in continuous lines, as in many mammals, but form a series of vertebra-like spots. This plan of decoration is continued even on the tail, which is coloured more on the upper than on the lower surface. The spotted cats have their spot-groups arranged on the flanks in the direction of the ribs, at the shoulder and haunch in curves, at the neck in another pattern, on the back of the head in another; and the pattern changes as each limb-joint is reached, the spots decreasing in size as the distance is greater from the spine. See Figs. 9-15. There is in tigers, and the cat-tribe generally, a dark stripe over the dental nerve; and the zygoma, or cheek-bone, is often marked by colour. Even the supraorbital nerve is shown in the forehead, and there are dark rings round the ears. In dissecting an ocelot at the Zoological Gardens in 1883, a forked line was found immediately over the fork of the jugular vein. The colouration in these animals seems often to be determined by the great nerves and nerve-centres, and the change from spots, or stripes, to wrinkled lines on the head are strikingly suggestive of the convolutions of the brain, falling, as they do, into two lateral masses, corresponding with the cerebral hemispheres, separated by a straight line, corresponding with the median fissure. This is well shown in the ocelot, Fig. 15, and in many other cats. That the nerves can affect the skin has already been pointed out in Chapter VI., in the case of herpes, and that it can affect colour is shown in the Hindoo described in the same place. So marked, indeed, is this emphasis of sensitive parts that every hair of the movable feelers of a cat is shown by colour to be different in function from the hairs of the neck, or from the stationary mass of hair from which the single longer hair starts. In the Badger, Fig. 16, there is a bulge-shaped mass of coloured hair near the dorsal and lumbar regions, but it is axially placed. The shoulder and loins are well marked, although in a different manner from other species. In some species of deer, and other mammalia, there are white or coloured lines parallel to the spine, and also, as in birds, spots coalesce and form lines, and lines break up into spots.