378 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



greed over a squirrel which had "been given them. Their mother 

 cuffed them, then bit the squirrel in two, and gave half of it to 

 each. Coonie, of Belfast, sitting on the window-sill by the side of 

 the ladies of the family when the glass was much clouded, put up 

 her paw and wiped off the mist. This act may be matched by 

 animals breaking ice to get at the water, and horses scraping the 

 snow from the ground to reach the grass beneath it, but it also 

 shows capacity for adaptation to circumstances. The same Coonie 

 usually had to suffer the loss of all but one of each litter of her 

 kittens. She finally seems to have determined to choose the one 

 that should be saved. She selected one, carried it away, and left 

 the rest to their fate. A Scotch cat, of Greenock, where the 

 family were in the habit of throwing out crumbs for the birds, 

 hid in the shrubbery to catch one of the birds when they came 

 up. One afternoon the crumbs were not eaten, and were covered 

 with snow during the night. In the morning, Puss was observed 

 picking the crumbs out of the snow and putting them on top, after 

 which she retired to her hiding-place. This was noticed two or 

 three times ; and at last Puss's success in catching the birds forced 

 the family to cease feeding them. Dr. G. Frost, of London, found 

 his cat in the habit of waiting m ambush for the throwing out of 

 crumbs for the birds. The practice of feeding the birds was left 

 off for a few days ; and Dr. Frost avers that he and another mem- 

 ber of the household saw the cat herself scattering crumbs on the 

 grass, " with the obvious intention of enticing the birds." * Mr. 

 James Hutchings tells, in Nature, f of a cat which, finding a young 

 blackbird fallen from its nest to the ground, spent several hours 

 in keeping a strange kitten away from the young bird, and at the 

 same time herself teasing it, in order to entice the parent, which 

 was hovering around, within her reach. The cat showed wonder- 

 ful persistency through several defeats, and played a variety of 

 tricks to deceive or attract the parent bird, till Mr. Hutchings 

 forcibly put an end to the cruel sport. A cat living in a hospital 

 in Massachusetts is described in Nature, which discovered the 

 blindness of one of the inmates, and regularly took advantage of 

 the fact to steal a part of her meal from her. Mr. Lawson Tait 

 relates that a mutual dislike arose between a visitor at his house 

 and his family of unusually intelligent cats. Although the cats 

 had always been scrupulously neat and clean, they regularly left 

 a noxious mess at the guest's room door so long as he stayed at 

 the house. Just as the slaughter of the whole tribe as nuisances 

 had been determined upon, the visitor went away, and the objec- 

 tionable deposit ceased. 



A story is told in the Hartford Times of a cat which became 



* Nature, vol. xix, p. 519. t Vo1 - xii . P- 33 - 



