2 5 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



caves, they lay at cross-roads, at night they carried on their operations 

 in ruined mills in the forest ; even witches and magicians assumed 

 their forms in order either to inflict injury upon others or to visit the 

 Bloeksberg. The German fables of animals allot to the cat the prize 

 for wisdom and deception. When it becomes necessary to bring the 

 robber Reynard to court to make an end to all his evil deeds and the 

 complaints arising therefrom, and Brown, i. e. Bruin, the bear has 

 failed in the attempt, then it appears that only Harry, the cat, is able 

 to accomplish the task of delivering the artful message to the evil- 

 doer. Again, the cat does not lack certain desirable qualities. How 

 burdensome does the dog with its caresses often become, how unskill- 

 f ully does he exert himself to please ; how gentle and amiable, on the 

 contrary, can the cat be, how pleasant its manner and motion ! Dur- 

 ing the middle ages, therefore, the cat served as a plaything for dis- 

 tinguished ladies, who nursed it on their laps and fed it with dainty 

 bits ; and at the present time, among many persons, the cat finds rec- 

 ognition and love : in Gottfried Mind it has found its Raphael, and 

 poets, like Tieck, Amadeus Hoffman, Lichtwer, and in recent times 

 Scheffel, have ennobled their thinking and striving ; who, for example, 

 does not hold in grateful remembrance the deep philosophizing of the 

 cat Hidigeigei (in Scheffel's " Trompeter von Sakkingen ") on the 

 theme " Why do men kiss ? " Even Lessing's quaint nature could find 

 a source of enjoyment in this animal ; on his writing-table lay his cat, 

 and no one can read without emotion how Lessing, when his favorite 

 had destroyed the manuscript of " Nathan," patiently and quietly 

 wrote the poem anew without depriving the author of the mischief of 

 its usual place. Notwithstanding this, for most men there is some- 

 thing demoniacal and weird about the animal, which withdraws it 

 from their sympathy ; hence Massius rightly says of it, " Complicated 

 by the favor of parties and by their hate, its character in history 

 wavers." 



Among manifold other varieties of animals, birds have always ex- 

 cited in a marked degree the attention and the favor of man. Since 

 the primeval time hosts of songs have been sung to the lark, the stork, 

 the nightingale, and the swallow, and the speech of people greets them 

 in their flight with a thousand fond, familiar words. Nay, it is not too 

 much to assert that, without the birds, even the spring-time would be 

 sad, just as by their flight the winter becomes so much the more 

 gloomy and desolate. But that which most attracts us to birds is 

 their power of song and of flight. In ancient times favored men pre- 

 tended to understand their mysterious sounds, which were to them 

 the voice of Fate, since they seemed either to encourage by a cheer- 

 ful address or to warn by threatening tones. The flight especially 

 seemed to be supernatural and worthy of admiration, and there has 

 certainly been no lack of attempts to imitate it, as the myth of the 

 Greeks regarding Daedalus and Icarus shows. But it was precisely 



