Cat is performed equally whether the animal is snugly housed beside the cottage 

 fire, or out of doors, exposed to the air. It happens, too, sooner before the actual 

 fall of rain, than the prognostics of most other animals. In this last circumstance 

 there is a philosophical truth, which it is desirable that some intelligent reader of 

 The Naturalist would work out and give to the world, through its pages. The 

 domestic Cat is, of all animals with which we are very familiar, by far the most 

 electric ; that is, the most susceptible to electric action. Clear and dry air is 

 well known to be a non-conductor of electric action ; and the more dry and clear 

 the air is, the more agreeable to Pussey. It is, indeed, highly probable that 

 the love of dry air, as much as the love of heat, brings the Cat to bask by the 

 fire when the air is damp and raw : but the subject has not been studied with the 

 attention which it deserves, for, strange though it may seem to some, the Cat 

 may be of more real service to the philosopher, in the study of meteorology, than 

 it was to Whittington in acquiring that wealth which enabled him to purchase the 

 triple mayoralty, or to Katerfelto in assisting him to impose upon the credulity 

 of the multitude, as a conjurer, 



"At his own wonders, wond'ring for his bread." 



For the investigation of so delicate a fluid as the atmosphere, in the variations 

 of its electric state, as resulting from the quantity of humidity in it, and from its 

 motions, we want instruments of the most delicate kind ; and no one will deny 

 that the body of an animal must, under any circumstances, be a far more delicate 

 instrument than any which can be made with hands. The finest of these must' 

 still be made of matter ; and, consequently, the atmospheric change must be great 

 enough for acting upon matter, before such an instrument can possibly point it 

 out. The feeling of the animal, on the other hand, is not matter, but a result of 

 the organization of matter ; and, therefore, it must be sensible down to almost the 

 extreme of smallness in atmospheric change, or in any other agent by which it is 

 affected. Those effects of minute or incipient changes upon delicate animals, 

 require a great deal of caution on the part of the observer ; hasty conclusions, 

 ought not, therefore, to be attempted to be drawn from them. They always 

 precede our own observation ; and though they are, in themselves, unerring, we 

 must use the same precaution with regard to them as we would do in all other 

 matters of reasoning : and it is this which brings us to one of the essential points 

 of the case — why should the lower animals be more weather-wise than we are ? 



This is a very important question, not only as it concerns those animals, but 

 as it bears on the highest — the immortal — interests of man. Simple as it, at first 

 sight, appears, it really involves the whole distinction between animals, which have 

 no powers beyond those that result from the organization of material substance, 

 and man, whose noblest powers are those which are exercised by an immaterial 



VOL. I. E 



