Henky. — Red Cats and Disease. 681 



dogs. This might have given me the hint, but I did not see it 

 until 1891, at Te Anau Downs Station, when there was a half- 

 wild tabby cat that had a litter of kittens not far from the 

 house. As the kittens grew up I noticed there was one red 

 one, and that some of the others were sick. I thought no 

 more of them till one day the red one happened right in my 

 path, and, as it was too weak to run away, I took it up and 

 found it was very light, just skin and bones, but healthy- 

 looking in the eyes, so I took it to the house and fed it, and it 

 soon got all right, and playful. Then I formed a theory — viz., 

 that if such a starved thing as that was had taken the disease 

 it could not have survived, and that possibly red cats were 

 proof against distemper. This one was reared in a nest where 

 I knew there was sickness, and I think all the rest of the 

 family died ; so that this survivor must have been proof against 

 it, for it quickly grew into a fine cat. 



I had read in "The Origin of Species" that there was 

 some ailment in Virginia that killed white pigs while black ones 

 were exempt ; and we know that something of the same kind 

 happens vvith the men in fever countries. I also remembered 

 a pet dingo in Victoria — quite a young thing — that never took 

 sick though tied in an infected kennel where some other pups 

 had died — and dingoes ai-e about the same colour as those red 

 cats, except the brindle markings. Perhaps it is immunity 

 from this disease that controls the colour of the dingoes, and 

 the immunity from the most fatal disease in a country may be 

 the cause of uniformity of colour in the animals. 



The colour of the zebras cannot be called protective, but I 

 have heard they are proof against a poisonous fly that kills 

 horses, though their widest difference from some ponies would 

 be in their colours. There are no great varieties among 

 zebras, and the variety of colour in our cattle may be due to 

 our ignorance in killing those that may have been proof 

 against disease. Thus we get a hint that colour may not be 

 only protective, as naturalists hold, but may be the outward 

 sign of internal diiference that we know little about, and 

 the idea is very like Nature's beautiful plans in everything. 

 It is new to me in a wide sense, and I think if I had known 

 it twenty years ago I could have made use of those red cats 

 among the rabbits by experimenting and finding suitable 

 mates for the red ones — perhaps tortoise-shells. Cats living 

 wholly on rabbits are very liable to disease, and if it were not 

 for that I think they would have been a match for the rabbits 

 in the back country, because they catch them with the 

 smallest expenditure of energy — by lying in wait for them — 

 and are otherwise the most harmless animals I know. 



Another instance of the relationship between colour and 

 disease is the many white cats that are deaf. 



