MammiferoHS Animals. 139 



mention of it, simpleton. — W, B. Clarke. Stanley-Green 

 Cottage, near Poole, July 2. 1833. 



Acts, possibly analogous, in the Lion and the Young of the 

 Domestic Cat. — In playing with a cat, young enough not to 

 refuse to play, it is observable that, when the cat has enclosed 

 your hand in its (all four) paws, and has also applied its 

 mouth to your flesh, ready to both lacerate and bite you at 

 the very next tickle, should you adventure one more, yet, if 

 you do not adventure one more, and hold your hand perfectly 

 still, you may usually save yourself the laceration and biting 

 threatened you, and, at the cat's own good pleasure, be entirely 

 released from its grasp. I have fancied there is a similarity 

 in this conduct of the cat of our hearth, and that of the lion 

 to Major Woodhouse, as described bv Mr. Waterton. (p. 5.) 

 J.D. 



A few Words on Cats.— -J, W. L. (V. 275.) tells of a cat 

 at Dorking, which never ate the mice he caught, but laid 

 them at the feet of the first person he met. My father had a 

 white male cat, about the year 1815 (when we resided at East 

 Bergholt, in Suffolk), which was even more sportsman-like 

 than his Dorking compatriot. In a meadow bank, behind 

 the house, were abundance of rabbits; the cat would go 

 thither, and bring away his game, even rabbits more than 

 half-grown, and, without injuring them in any way, would 

 take them into the house, lay them at the feet of any one he 

 met, and retire to the door, to prevent the escape of his prey. 

 This I remember to have occurred frequently, till, in one of 

 his poaching expeditions, poor Tom was taken in a snare laid 

 for his game, and delivered over to the executioner, to be 

 done with according to game law. 



J. D. (V. 276. and 674.), X. (V. 674.), and Mancuniensis 

 (V. 717.), speak of cats without tails. The last observes 

 that they are plentiful in the part of the Isle of Man 

 called '' the Calf of Man." This can hardly be, as the 

 Calf of Man is a smaller island at the southern extremity 

 of Man, and is not peopled or inhabited, save by the family 

 of the person who has charge of the splendid lighthouse 

 erected there. I do not exactly agree in the description 

 given by Mancuniensis, though the tailless cats of Man are 

 tall. When I was in the island, with some college friends, in 

 the long vacation of 1820, we had much amusement with 

 these curious creatures. I saw several in the huts of the 

 peasantry, amongst the mountains, between Ramsay and Peel 

 Town ; but as the honest people did not speak English, and we 

 spoke no Manx, I learned nothing of their history there. But 

 mentioning the subject to a person at Balla Salla, near Castle 



