TABBY GATS 69 



tailless so-called Manx breed and of the peculiarly 

 coloured Siamese breed, there seems to be no reason 

 to suppose that selective breeding of Cats was started 

 before the latter half of the 19th century ; and we 

 know from Linnseus's description of Felis catus 

 that the Blotched Tabby existed as a perfect type in 

 Sweden as early as the middle of the 18th century. 

 This fact disposes of another hypothesis that might 

 otherwise be entertained, namely, that the blotched 

 pattern was developed step by step from the striped 

 pattern by the slow and gradual process of preserving 

 and breeding from slight varieties tending in the 

 fancied direction. 



It has also been suggested by an author unaware 

 of the closeness of the relationship between the 

 European and African Wild Cats and of their funda- 

 mental similarity in pattern that the Blotched Tabby 

 was the result of crossing individuals of these two 

 species. When two distinct species of striped or 

 spotted mammals are crossed the offspring sometimes 

 resembles neither of its parents in pattern. Professor 

 Ewart,* for example, found that when he paired a 

 male Chapman's zebra with a bay female pony, the 

 foal, while resembling the dam in colour, showed 

 a pattern of stripes not the least like those of its 

 sire, but rather closely resembling those of a totally 

 distinct species of zebra, namely, Grevy's zebra ; 

 and believing that the pattern of Grevy's zebra is a 

 more primitive type than that of Chapman's zebra, 

 he considered the pattern of the hybrid foal to be an 



* The Penycuick Experiments. A. andC. Black. London, 1899. 



