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Researches in regard to the Ancient History qf' our Domestic 

 Animals, and our Common Plants. By M. Bureau de la 

 Mallu. 



I. The Cat. Felis. 



1 HERE is much obscurity respecting the native country of the 

 cat, and the period at which it was first domesticated. 



Baron Cuvier, in the last edition of his Regne Animal *, and 

 Frederick Cuvier, under the word Chatf, in the Dictionnaire 

 des Sciences Naturelles, affirm, the former, that the cat (which 

 it is true sometimes occurs wild in France) is a native of our 

 forests'; the latter, that the period at which the cat was domesti- 

 cated, does not seem to be very remote, and that the Greeks 

 were little acquainted with it, &c. \ 



These assertions of two very able zoologists have seemed to 

 me to require examination, not being confirmed by positive 

 testimony. 



It is evident, in the first place, that the Greeks were ac- 

 quainted with the cat from the most remote antiquity. The 

 mummies of that animal found in the sepulchres of Thebes, 

 and the figures sculptured on monuments on which we read 

 the names of the Pharaohs, concur with the Sacred Scriptures to 

 prove that, in the earliest ages, it existed in Egypt and Palestine 

 in the domestic state. 



Herodotus describes it under the name of '^A^Aeuge?. The 

 manners of this animal carefully observed, the habit which the 

 male cats have of eating their young, related by the father of 

 history, and confirmed by modern naturalists, the terror inspired 

 in it by fire, the honours which were rendered to cats, their be- 

 ing embalmed, and their mode of sepulture, facts confirmed by 

 the numerous mummies of cats that have been brought from 



Egypt, and which, moreover, positively determine the species ; 



all these circumstances together remove all doubts, l*^, re- 

 specting the identity of the species known to the Greeks under 

 the name of «<;c»co?. and worshipped and embalmed in Egypt ; 



■ Tom. i. p. 165. f Tom. viii. p. 206. Levrault's edition. 



X Ibid. p. 210. 



