432 THE CARNIVORES 



modern cat. The late Professor Rolleston, of Oxford, brought forward, however, a 

 considerable amount of evidence to show that the ailuros of the Greeks was really a 

 marten, and this view receives some support from the fact that no remains of cats 

 have been discovered among the ashes of Pompeii and Herculaneum. That cats 

 continued to be comparatively scarce and valuable animals during the middle ages, 

 is proved by the laws made in several countries for their special protection, and 

 the fines imposed on those who injured or killed them. 



Coming now to the consideration of the various kinds of domestic cats, it may 

 be observed, in the first place, that the different breeds of these animals are dis- 

 tinguished from one another mainly or entirely by such characteristics as color, length 

 of hair, or more rarely, length of tail ; and that they do not present the marked 

 structural differences distinguishing the various breeds of dogs. This general 

 similarity may be partly accounted for by the circumstance that all cats are required 

 for much the same purpose, so that there has been no special inducement for 

 breeders to modify the structure of the creature. A more important factor in the 

 case is, however, in our opinion, the greater specialization of a cat as compared with 

 a dog, as is particularly shown in the shortness of the face, the diminution in the 

 number of the teeth, and the peculiar structure of the cheek-teeth, it being suffi- 

 ciently obvious that a short-faced and few-toothed animal is not capable of those 

 modifications in the length and proportions of the skull, which can be so readily in- 

 duced in creatures with longer muzzles and a greater number of teeth. That cats 

 are, however, capable of perpetuating for a longer or shorter period structural modi- 

 fications, is proved by a race of these animals with six toes on each foot, in which 

 the peculiarity was inherited to the tenth generation. 



As regards coloration, European cats are commonly either "tabby," black, 

 white, sandy, tortoise shell, dun, gray, or the so-called "blue" ; the two latter 

 colors being more rare than the others. All these different varieties will generally 

 breed more or less nearly true if prevented from crossing, but it frequently happens 

 that litters will contain different-colored kittens. Formerly the ordinary European 

 cats were short and smooth-haired animals, but of late years there has been a large 

 amount of crossing with the Persian breed, which has resulted in the production of 

 a number of long-haired cats. The true-bred "tabby" cat was, perhaps, the most 

 common English variety, its well-marked vertical stripes being not improbably due 

 to an original crossing with the wild cat. Its proper ground color is gray, marked 

 with a black stripe down the back, and having subconcentric bands of the same 

 color on the sides and limbs. The rare gray cats may be regarded as tabbies which 

 have lost all their stripes, with the exception of two transverse bars on the fore- 

 legs. Black cats may probably be considered analogous to black leopards, since, 

 even when purely bred, young kittens of this color almost invariably show the 

 stripes of the " tabby." Usually black cats have some white hairs, more especially 

 on the throat, and it is almost needless to remark, by an ever-increasing mixture of 

 white, a perfect transition may exist from black to white cats, the same holding good 

 with regard to the other breeds. In pure-bred black cats the eyes are of a clear yel- 

 low. In white cats, on the other hand, the eyes may be either of the ordinary greenish- 

 yellow tinge, or of a pure blue, while in some cases one eye may be blue and the 



