158 THE WILD CAT OF BRITAIN. 



its Feet, with Claws, being a crafty, subtle, watchful Creature, 

 very loving and familiar with Man-kind, the mortal enemy 

 to the Rat, Mouse, and all sorts of Birds, which it seizes on 

 as its prey. As to its Eyes, Authors say that they shine in 

 the Night, and see better at the full, and more dimly at the 

 change of the moon ; as also that the Cat doth vary his 

 Eyes with the Sun, the Apple of its Eye being long at Sun 

 rise, round towards Noon, and not to be seen at all at night, 

 but the whole Eye shining in the night. These appearances 

 of the Cats' Eyes I am sure are true, but whether they 

 answer to the times of the day, I never observed." " Its 

 flesh is not usually eaten, yet in some countries it is 

 accounted an excellent dish." 



Mr. Blaine, in his excellent and useful work, the " Ency- 

 clopaedia of Rural Sports " — a book no sportsman should be 

 without — thus discusses the origin of the domestic cat com- 

 pared with the British wild cat : 



" We have yet, however, to satisfy ourselves with regard 

 to the origin of the true wild cat {Felis catus, Linn.), which, 

 following the analogies of the Felvicz generally, are almost 

 exclusively native to countries warmer than our own. It is 

 true that occasionally varieties of the Felines do breed in our 

 caravans and menageries, where artificial warmth is kept up 

 to represent something like a tropical temperature ; but the 

 circumstance is too rare to ground any opinion on of their 

 ever having been indigenous here — at least, since our part 

 of the globe has cooled down to its present temperature. It 

 is, therefore, more than probable that both the wild and the 

 tame cat have been derived from some other extra-European 

 source or sources. We say source or sources, for such ad- 

 mission begets another difficulty not easily got over, which 

 is this, that if both of these grimalkins own one common 

 root, in which variety was it that the very marked differences 

 between them have taken place? Most sportsmen, we 

 believe, suspect that they own one common origin, and 

 some naturalists also do the same, contending that the diffe- 

 rences observable between them are attributable solely to the 

 long-continued action of external agencies, which had modi- 

 fied the various organs to meet the varied necessities of the 



