78 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



As previously stated, most of the external characteristics 

 usually considered as specific to the Wild Cat are common 

 to the domestic species, especially to the tabby variety. 

 Particular stress is laid on the shortness and thickness of the 

 tail of the Wild Cat, as differing from that of the domestic 

 cat, notwithstanding that Macgillivray, in 1838 (Naturalist's 

 Library, vol. vii., " Mammalia "), drew attention to this fallacy. 

 He says : " The tail of the domestic cat seems longer and 

 more tapering because the fur is thinner and shorter, but 

 individuals of the domestic cat are at times met with which 

 exhibit scarcely any difference from the Wild Cat." In 

 respect to this apparent shortness of the tail, in measuring a 

 number of the tails of both races, I found that they ranged 

 between I I and 1 4^- inches, the longer length being quite as 

 often found in the Wild Cats as in the domestic. 1 



In conclusion, the history of the Scottish Wild Cat may 

 be divided into two periods : the first commencing with 

 the prehistoric cat, as found in the marl beds of Forfarshire, 

 continuing on through early historic times, not only previous 

 to, but long after, the introduction of the domestic cat, as 

 the Felis sylvestris of the earlier writers and of the Middle 

 Ages ; and the second period beginning when the domestic 

 cat had become more diffused over the country and the 

 interbreeding of the two races more general, producing a 

 mixed breed, the Felis catus ferns of authors, now quite 

 extinct. This again interbred with a pseudo wild cat, the 

 offspring of domestic cats which had taken to a wild life, 

 now an extremely rare animal. But there is also a feral cat 

 now existing and becoming, especially in some districts, 

 common the offspring of domestic cats without any strain 

 of the original native cat, and with very little, if any, affinity 

 to the Felis catus ferns of the seventeenth or eighteenth 

 centuries. 



1 The length of the small intestines, and the periods of gestation, are often 

 supposed to be specific characteristics. I have entered fully into these in my 

 "Wild Cat of Europe," pp. 70, 74. 



