95 MATING. 



MATING. 



Yet nature is made better by no mean, 

 But nature makes that mean : so, o'er that art, 

 Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art 

 That nature makes. 



Con'olanus, Aci II. Scene i. 



This requires much and careful consideration, and in this, as 

 well as in many other things, experience and theory join 

 hands, while the knowledge of the naturalist and fancier is 

 of great and superlative value; though, with all combined, 

 anything like certainty can never be assured, although the 

 possession of pedigree is added, and the different properties of 

 food, health, quality, and breed understood and taken into 

 account. Still, much may be gained by continued observa- 

 tion and close study of the peculiar properties of colour, 

 besides that of form. If, for instance, a really, absolutely 

 hhie cat, without a shade of any other colour, were obtainable, 

 and likewise a pure, clear, canary yellow, there is little 

 doubt that at a distant period, a green would be the 

 ultimate goal of success. But the yellow tabby is not a yellow, 

 nor the blue a blue. There being, then, only a certain 

 variety of colours in cats, the tints to be gained are limited 

 entirely to a certain set of such colours, and the numerous 

 shades and half-shades of these mixed, broken, or not, into 

 such tints, markings light or dark, as desired. To all such 

 colour arrangements, if I may so call them, by the mind, 

 intellect, or hand of man, there is a limit, beyond which 

 none can go. It is thus far and no farther. 



There is the black cat, and the white; and between 

 these are intervening shades, from very light, or white-gray, 

 to darker, blue, dark blue, blackish blue, gray and black. 

 If a blue-black is used, the lighter colours are of one tint ; if 

 a brown-black, they are another. 



