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one or two hybrids. He had a letter recently from Mr. Bartlett 
respecting theirs, but he did not like to give an opinion without 
seeing it. - 
The question would be asked, had not our household cat been 
domesticated from the wild cat? He would not detain them 
by going into particulars, but it was pretty well established that the 
domestic cat was a descendant of the tame cat of the Egyptians, intro- 
duced into the western provinces by the Romans. In support of this 
view he would only mention that, whereas the wild cat was so abundant 
in the time of Richard II., as to be one of the beasts of the chase— 
that King having granted a charter to the Abbot of Peterborough, 
giving him permission to hunt the hare, fox, and wild cat—-the domestic 
cat was only heard of in Britain about the 1oth century, when it was 
highly valued, and laws were passed to regulate its preservation. Thus 
Howel Dha, of Wales, who died A.D. 948, fixed the price of a Kitling 
(which is still the north country phrase) before it could see at a penny, 
and till it caught a mouse at twopence. At the value of money in 
those days this was a large price. But, besides this, it was enacted 
that if anyone stole or killed the cat that guarded the prince’s granary, 
he was to forfeit a milch ewe, its fleece and lamb; or as much wheat 
as when poured on the cat suspended by its tail (its head touching the 
floor) would form a heap high enough to cover the tip of the tail. 
This legal process must have been more flattering to pussy’s sense of 
dignity than altogether comfortable to her feelings. 
The little animal which had been presented as the Australian 
native cat, although it was not a cat at all, he introduced for the pur- 
poses of getting their friends Mr. B. Lomax and Mr. E. Moore to tell 
them something about it ; for like many Australian animals the accounts 
of itin works on Zoology were very limited. Indeed, as has been 
remarked, “ There is hardly any practical writer on Zoology who does 
not lament the very incomplete state of our knowledge on the subject 
of Australian Zoology, and those who have thrown themselves most 
zealously into the work, and have achieved the greatest success, have 
been the most ready to acknowledge the enormous gap that has yet to 
be filled up, and to urge others to prosecute their researches in regions 
which have as yet been untraversed by the foot of civilized man, and 
which are the most likely to be the dwelling places of creatures on 
which, as yet, an educated white man has never set his eye.” 
a 
