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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the land of Cush, did the cat come to the 

 front. We may therefore regard the cat 

 as a Cushite animal, derived from the Felts 

 maniculata, which was found wild in upper 

 Nubia and the Soodan. The Egyptians 

 carried their reverence for cats to what 

 seems to us a ridiculous excess. If any of 

 them voluntarily slew one of the sacred 

 animals, he was punished with death ; and 

 Diodorus relates that a Roman soldier who 

 had killed a cat could hardly escape the 

 fury of the people. When a cat died in a 

 house, the people shaved their eyebrows ; 

 and dead cats were embalmed and buried in 

 the city of Bubastis, which was sacred to 

 Pasht. According to M. Lenormant, the 

 Egyptians still respect cats, and in Cairo 

 serve up a copious banquet every day to the 

 cats of each quarter, " in the court of the 

 house of the cadi." The late introduction 

 of domesticated cats among Semitic peoples 

 seems to be proved by the absence of men- 

 tion of them in the Bible. The Assyrians 

 and Babylonians are said to have been 

 equally ignorant of the animal. A lively 

 discussion between Mr. A. S. Murray and 

 Professor Mahaffy a few years ago, as to 

 whether the Greeks had cats, seems to have 

 resulted in an understanding that they had 

 not. Their cat was a polecat or something 

 else, and the Byzantine writers of later days 

 seem to have been the first who gave its 

 name to the modern cat. No Greek or Ro- 

 man pictures or representations of the mau 

 or " mew-cat " of the Egyptians are known, 

 except one that M. Longpcrier has found on 

 a Tarentine coin struck shortly before the 

 wars of Pyrrhus, and one on a lost post- 

 Christian tombstone. The Indo-Aryans of 

 the Vedic age seem to have lived and died 

 ignorant of cats. The Sanskrit names of 

 the animal mean " the animal of the house," 

 "the house-wolf," "the rat-eater," "the 

 enemy of mice." M. Pictet thinks that none 

 of the European names for the cat belong 

 to the old Aryan tongue. The Roman name, 

 catus, signifies sly, cunning, crafty, but is 

 traced by him back to the Syriac gat6 and 

 the Arabic gift, and thence back to AfricaD 

 words of which the Nubian kadiska is an 

 example. This gives more evidence, such 

 as it is, of the African origin of the animal. 

 Some of the names, such as the Persian 

 puschak and its variants, appear related to 



our puss, and are connected by M. Pictet 

 with the Sanskrit prttchha, tail the creature 

 with the waving tail. Our cat is supposed 

 to be derived from the wild-cat an animal 

 which gave the name to the clan Chattan, 

 and a title to the Duchess of Sutherland, 

 which is said to mean " the Great Lady of 

 the Cat." Finally, the " Saturday Review," 

 from which we derive this gossip, expresses 

 its admiration at the sagacity with which 

 the cat passes a double life " a sleek do- 

 mestic favorite all day, a wild animal of un- 

 bridled impulse in the darkness of night." 



Bedouin Weddings. Dr. Siegfried Lan- 

 ger pleasantly describes in " Das Ausland " 

 the marriage customs of the Bedouins of 

 Es Salt, Palestine. First, as is the usage 

 among all Semitic peoples, the bride is 

 bought. The purchase-money is paid, half 

 to her parents in compensation for bringing 

 her up and supporting her, whence it is 

 called milk-money ; the other half in the 

 form of dresses and ornaments for the 

 bride, or of a provision for a settlement 

 in case of divorce: and all must be paid 

 in cash. As the time of the marriage 

 approaches, the groom's associates collect 

 around his house some evening and perform 

 a wild symbolical dance with a great noise. 

 The bride's friends, in the mean while are 

 making her dress, which, when it is done, is 

 paraded at the head of a procession singing 

 praises of the beauty and accomplishments 

 of the bride and the manly virtues of the 

 groom. On the wedding-day the bride, if 

 she lives in another town, is brought to her 

 future home unveiled and on horseback, with 

 an escort of a dozen armed men. She finds 

 the friends of the bridegroom awaiting her, 

 and they engage in a contest to gain the 

 right by seizing to become her host for din- 

 ner. These contests sometimes become real 

 fights. If, however, the bride lives in the 

 same town with the groom, her friends serve 

 her at the bath, and the putting on of her 

 wedding-clothes, after which she takes her 

 seat of honor to wait for the groom. He, in 

 the mean time, has ridden to the nearest well 

 for a bath, followed to the gate of the town 

 by a procession of women bearing a figure 

 adorned with pieces of the bride's outfit. 

 Having performed his ablutions, he rides 

 back, and on the way strikes with his riding- 



