or Zoological Recollections, 325 



were turned into wolves in his time, and from wolves to men 

 again ;" and to that fable of Pausanias, of a man that was ten 

 years a wolf, and afterwards turned to his former shape ; or 

 to the tale of Ovid, who describes Lycaon as taking the shape 

 of a wolf. And some commentators on the Bible have con- 

 sidered Nebuchadnezzar's punishment as this kind of madness. 

 (Daniel, iv. 33.) Hippocrates, in his treatise on insanity, 

 supposes that the daughters of king Priaetus, who thought 

 themselves heifers, were afflicted with this malady. 



That Romulus and Remus were suckled by a wolf, was a 

 figurative fiction, from the circumstance of the name of their 

 nurse, who was called Lupa. We learn also from Horace, 

 that a part of the incantations of disappointed women con- 

 sisted in secretly burying at night the beard, or probably 

 the mane, of a wolf, and the teeth of a serpent. 



" Lupi barbam, variae cum dente colubrae 

 Abdiderint furtim terris." 



In Puck's delightful imagery of midnight, at the end of 

 Midsummer Nigkfs Dream^ all the printed editions represent 

 the wolf as looking on the moon : — 



" Now the hungry lion roars. 

 And the wolf beholds the moon." 



This is probably an error, and might be easily corrected — 

 " And the wolf behowls the moon," 

 as Shakespeare in another place expresses the same idea. 



CAT, 



Originally came from Persia, and was unknown to Pliny 

 and the Roman writers ; whence the term puss, probably a 

 corruption of Pers. Soon after her introduction into these 

 islands, she was considered of such value, that by the laws 

 of Howel Dha, whosoever killed the king's cat, for his fine 

 and atonement was to hold her up by the tip of the tail, so 

 that her nose touched the ground, and heap up wheat till the 

 body, to the tail's tip, was covered. 



The cat is a fixed and settled domestic animal, attached 

 to the premises, and unwilling to remove; while the dog 

 follows the master : and such is the natural antipathy and 

 discordance between these two animals, that, of persons living 

 in no very social harmony, it is said, they lead the life of cat 

 and dog. She has a more voluminous and expressive vocabu- 

 lary than any other known brute : the short twitter of com- 

 placency and affection to her kittens ; the pur of tranquillity 

 and pleasure, when seated on the knee of her master; the 

 spit of defiance ; the mew of distress ; the growl of anger : 



Y 3 



