The Annals 



of 



Scottish Natural History 



No. 22] 1897 [APRIL 



THE WILD CAT OF SCOTLAND. 

 By EDWARD HAMILTON, M.D., F.L.S., F.Z.S. 



THE history of the Wild Cat of Scotland must be in a great 

 measure conjectural. As far as I can judge from my own 

 observations and researches, which have extended over a 

 period of upwards of thirty years, as well as from the observa- 

 tions of others, I find but very few facts which can be entirely 

 relied on, and the few there are are mixed up with a great many 

 fallacies. 



It would seem that the original Wild Cat, as found in 

 early historical times as well as in the Middle Ages, has 

 for a long time been quite extinct in this country, its place 

 being taken in the first instance by a mixed breed, in which 

 the hereditary strain of the original wild race predominated. 

 Later on, as the imported domestic race increased in numbers 

 and localities, this was superseded by a still more modified 

 form of feral cat, in which the foreign characteristics of the 

 ancestral progenitors of the domestic race, viz. the African 

 cat, were in the ascendant, and prevail up to the present time. 



The only evidence of the existence of the Wild Cat in 



Scotland in prehistoric times rests on the discovery of some 



osseous remains in the shell marl deposits at the bottom of 



five or six small lochs in Forfarshire intermingled with the 



22 B 



