THE CAT TRIBE 



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and it is therefore easy to know where to set a trap for them. Having caught and killed one of 

 the colony, the rest of them are sure to be taken if the body of their slain relative is left in the 

 same place not far from their usual hunting-ground and surrounded with traps, as every wild cat 

 passing that way will to a certainty come to it." 



The wild cat ranges from the far north of Scotland, across Europe and Northern Asia, to 

 the northern slopes of the Himalaya. It has always been known as one of the fiercest and wild- 

 est of the cats, large or small. The continual ill-temper of these creatures is remarkable. In 

 the experience of the keepers of menageries there is no other so intractably savage. One pre- 

 sented to the Zoological Gardens by Lord Lilford some eight years ago still snarls and spits at 

 any one who comes near it, even the keeper. 



The food of the wild cat is grouse, mountain-hares, rabbits, small birds, and probably fish 

 caught in the shallow waters when chance offers. It is wholly nocturnal ; consequently no one 

 ever sees it hunting for prey. Though it has long been confined to the north and northwest of 

 Scotland, it is by no means on the verge of extinction. The deer-forests are saving it to some 

 extent, as they did the golden eagle. Grouse and hares are rather in the way when deer are 

 being stalked ; consequently the wild cat and the eagle are not trapped or shot. The limits of 

 its present fastnesses were recently fixed by careful Scotch naturalists at the line of the Caledo- 

 nian Canal. Mr. Harvie Brown, in 1880, said that it only survived in Scotland north of a line 

 running from Oban to the junction of the three counties of Perth, Forfar, and Aberdeen, and 

 thence through Banffshire to Inverness. But the conclusion of a writer in the Edinburgh 

 Review of July, 1898, in a very interesting article on the survival of British mammals, has been 

 happily contradicted. He believed that it only survived in the deer-forests of Inverness and 

 Sutherlandshire. The wild cats shown in the illustrations of these pages were caught a year 

 later as far south as Argyllshire. The father and two kittens were all secured, practically un- 

 hurt, and purchased by Mr. Percy Leigh Pemberton for his collection of British mammals at 

 Ashford, in Kent. This gentleman has had great success in preserving his wild cats. They, as 

 well as others martens, polecats, and other small carnivora are fed on fresh wild rabbits killed 

 in a warren near ; consequently they are in splendid condition. The old " torn " wild cat, 

 snarling with characteristic ill-humour, was well supported by the wild and savage little kittens, 

 which exhibited all the family temper. Shortly before the capture of these wild cats another 



By ptrmtiiitn / Ptrcj Liigti Ptmktrttn, Ely. 



EUROPEAN WILD CAT 



The British ret>retentaeii/e of this species is rapidly becoming extinct. The ."iccimcn -white portrait is given here -was caught in 



