158 Lloyd's natural history. 



The late Mr. Blyth distinguished two races of Domestic 

 Indian Cats, namely, the spotted and the fulvous types. In 

 the former the spots tend to aggregate into streaks, especially 

 on the front regions of the body, while the tail is slender, of 

 uniform thickness, and marked with dark rings. Cats of this 

 type are frequently met with, which have reverted to a wild 

 state, and it seems probable that it was from the skin of such 

 a feral Cat that the so-called Waved Cat (Felis torquata) of 

 Frederic Cuvier was named. Consequently, following the 

 lead of Mr. W. L. Sclater, that name, which Mr. Blanford, in 

 his " Mammals of British India," provisionally allowed to 

 stand as indicative of a wild species, is here included as a 

 synonym of F domestica. As already said, it is highly prob- 

 able that this spotted type was largely evolved from the 

 Desert Cat, with more or less crossing with the Rusty-spotted 

 and Leopard-Cat. 



The second, or fulvous type, was termed by Blyth the 

 11 Chaus-coloured " Cat, and this breed he believed to have 

 been derived from the other domestic type by crossing with the 

 Jungle Cat (F. c/ia?is), to be described later on. This breed 

 is of a uniform fulvous colour, with barred legs and a ringed 

 tail; and thus far it closely resembles the Jungle Cat. In its 

 proportions it is, however, considerably different, the legs and 

 ears being much shorter, and the tail considerably longer 

 than in the latter. 



As the subject of the origin of the domestic breeds is a 

 very complex one, and also one in which there is still much 

 diversity of view among zoologists, we leave it with the fore- 

 going brief observations, to pass in review some of the better- 

 known and more noteworthy types. Before doing so we may, 

 however, quote from an American newspaper the following 

 very remarkable instance of the adaptability of Cats to ab- 

 normal and changed conditions, since such capacity for change 



