CHAP, i.] INTRODUCTORY. 3 



the date 1239, and by a similar charter given by Richard the Second 

 to the Abbot of Peterborough. 



The Wild Cat is now (thanks to the destruction of our forests, 

 the introduction of fire-arms, and the over-zeal of game-keepers,) 

 extinct in England, and perhaps in Wales also, though it lived 

 here till within fifty, and in Wales till within twenty years ago. In 

 Ireland it seems never to have existed, and the stories we read of 

 Irish wild cats probably refer to the progeny of domestic cats run 

 wild. This is the opinion of Dr. Hamilton, F.Z.S., who has paid 

 great attention to this subject, and carefully collected and investigated 

 the evidence as to the existence of the wild cat in Ireland. In Scotland 

 it is still far from uncommon, and is especially frequent in Inverness, 

 Ross-shire, Sutherland, and on the west coast of the Highlands, where 

 the recent increase of rabbits (animals so useful to it as good food,) 

 seems to have occasioned some increase in the number of wild 

 cats. These animals exist also in Skye, but not in the Western 

 Isles. 



On the continent the wild cat is found in Southern Russia, and 

 the adjacent parts of Asia, Turkey, Greece, Hungary, Germany, 

 Dalmatia, Spain, Switzerland, and, though now very rare, France.* 

 It does not appear to exist in Norway or Sweden. 



4. Our Domestic Cat seems to have come to us (like our other 

 domestic animals) from the East, and is probably a descendant of 

 the old domestic cat of Egypt, which, as the granary of the ancient 

 world, might well have been the country in which the animal was 

 originally tamed. In the Egyptian Gallery of the British Museum 

 is an excellent painting of a tabby cat, which seems to be aiding a 

 man who is capturing birds. It is mentioned in inscriptions as early 

 as 1684 B.C., and it was certainly domesticated in Egypt thirteen 

 hundred years before Christ. The earliest known representation of 

 the cat as a domestic animal and pet, is at Leyden in a tablet of the 

 18th or 19th dynasty, wherein it appears seated under a chair. 

 In Egypt, it was an object of religious worship and the venerated 

 inmate of certain temples. The goddess Pasht or Bubastis, the 

 Goddess of Cats, was, under the Roman Empire, represented with a 

 cat's head. A temple at Beni-Hassan, dedicated to her, is as old as 

 Thothmes IV. of the 18th dynasty, 1500 B.c.f Behind that temple 



* One wild cat at the least has been 

 killed in France between 1815 and 1830. 



f Dr. Birch has kindly informed me 

 that the earliest representation of the cat, 

 with which he is acquainted, the date of 

 which, is certain, is on tomb No. 170 

 of the Berlin Museum, apparently of 

 about 1600 B.C. ; but that it also figures 

 on a tablet which from its style appears 

 to be two hundred years older as part 

 of the name of a woman, "Main" or 



bably repetitious of a much earlier text. 

 It is mentioned in the 17th chapter of 

 the Eitual, and the coffins of the llth 

 dynasty are inscribed with that chapter, 

 which, according to Lepsius, would carry 

 us back to about 2400 B.C. In a copy of 

 the Eitual of B.C. 1500, its 33rd chapter 

 -has the text, "thou hast eaten the rats 

 hateful to Ea (the Sun), and thou feedest 

 on the bones of the impure cat." In 

 Egypt an animal, though sacred in one 

 city, might be regarded as impure in 



cat. It also appears in hunting scenes 



of the 18th dynasty, and in rituals j another city. 



written under that dynasty, but pro- I 



B 2 



