Mammiferous Animals. 141 



barbarously destroying his furniture and drinking all his 

 wine, shut up his cat, with the empty bottles, in a closet in 

 the kitchen. As the family were driven out of the house at 

 the point of the bayonet, to seek shelter where they could, no 

 thought was taken of any thing but their preservation. On 

 the 1 5th October (just 21 days afterwards), I accompanied 

 Dr. Verstraeten and some friends to his house, to see the 

 ruins, and, on descending to the kitchen, the door of the 

 above-named closet was opened, and immediately the cat, 

 which had remained there a prisoner since the battle, came 

 bounding out with a look and a cry of hunger and joy. Dr. 

 Verstraeten remarked himself, that the cat was supposed to 

 have been lost or killed, and expressed his surprise at her 

 existence so long without food. The poor animal could not 

 have had any food (unless a mouse or two) during her im- 

 prisonment, as the house contained nothing which had escaped 

 the piratical hands of the besiegers, save a solitary bottle of 

 preserved gooseberries, the only entire article in the house. 

 The poor thing looked as wretched as possible ; but she de- 

 voured most voraciously some food we procured from a house 

 opposite, and lived to do justice to her deliverer from " durance 

 vile." 



Since I wrote the above, I have been informed, by Captain 

 T. Festing, R. N., of this place, that a favourite cat belonging 

 to his family, which was transported from Andover hither, 

 suddenly decamped, and, after being on his travels nine days, 

 arrived, " hungry and sore bested," at his old quarters, 

 having discovered his way across the country without a guide. 

 So much, for the present, on cats, English, Manx, and Bel- 

 gian. — W. B. Claf'/ce, Parkstone, near Poole, Dec. 18. 1832. 



Additional note to my short paper entitled '* A few Words 

 on Cats." — W. B, C. August, 1833. 



" In the Sappho, lately arrived from Nova Scotia, at Bid- 

 deford, was found the cat belonging to the vessel, about the 

 middle of the cargo. She had been a prisoner 29 days, and, 

 of course, had nothing to subsist on during that time ; she 

 was still alive, but almost a skeleton. The captain gave her 

 some milk, of which she drank greedily, and is now slowly 

 recovering." [Western Luminary, Aug. 6. 1833.) 



The Baltic trader, Mary, Capt. Ritchie, arrived a few days 

 ago at Leith, with a cargo of flax from St. Petersburgh. On 

 unpacking one of the bundles of flax, a cat; was found bound 

 up and much compressed within it, but still alive. The vessel 

 had been 28 days on its passage. The cat revived. (Berrow^s 

 Worcester Journal, Oct. 24. 1833.) — J. D. 



Some of the Inhabitants of the Isle of Man ascribe the Origin 



