392 



NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [ 12:9— Dec, 1916 



Animal Rescue League of Boston has done a great work in rescuing 

 numbers of homeless, starving cats and humanely destroying 

 them, also in disposing of surplus kittens. Mr. Huntington Smith, 

 managing director of the league, has been kind enough to give 

 me the following account of the cats handled by the association 

 during ten years, and the disposition made of them: 



YEAR 



Received Destroyed 



Placed in 

 Homes 



I905 

 1906 

 I907 

 1908 

 1909 

 I9IO 

 I9II 

 1912 



1913 

 1914 



14,400 

 16,151 



14-157 

 15,330 

 20,414 

 23,089 



23-691 

 27,670 



29,525 

 31,122 



13,791 

 15,667 

 I3-7IO 



14,915 

 20,042 

 22,385 

 22,529 



27,295 

 29,078 

 30,688 



Aggregates, ten years, 1905-14 : 215,449 210,090 



649 

 494 

 447 

 313 

 372 

 310 

 229 

 356 

 447 

 536 



2,908 



Numbers of Vagabond or Wild House Cats in the Country- "Wild 

 or feral house cats that pass their lives mainly in the fields or 

 woods are rarely seen by human eyes, except by those of the hunter 

 or naturalist. Therefore many people who have never investi- 

 gated the matter, and never have seen such cats, find it hard to 

 believe that they are numerous enough to be a great menace to 

 wild life, but nearly all my most observant correspondents who 

 roam the woods and fields report traces of many cats. Mr. 

 William Brewster of Cambridge, the Nestor of New England 

 ornithologists, says that he and his dogs frequently have started 

 cats from their resting places in woods and game covers. He says, 

 writing from Concord, that they are seldom noticed, being shy, 

 elusive and largely nocturnal, but that he finds their tracks 

 everywhere in the woods after the first snowfall. He asserts 

 that his guides, James Bernier and William Sargen, of Upton, Me., 

 trappers of large experience, assured him some years ago that the 

 forested parts of New England with which they were familiar 

 were numerously inhabited by wood cats. Quite as many cats 

 as other fur -bearing animals were caught in traps even in " locations 

 upward of thirty miles from any house or clearing, and over the 

 northern Maine line in the Canadian woods." 



