i62 THE WILD CAT OF BRITAIN. 



garland of facts connected with the British wild cat {Felis 

 catus) up to the present, and which I deem valuable from 

 many points of view, but the more particularly as a record 

 of an animal once abundant in England, where it has now 

 apparently almost, if not quite, ceased to exist. 



*' In England in former days, the wuld cat was included 

 amongst the beasts of chase, and is often mentioned in 

 royal grants giving liberty to inclose forest land and licence 

 to hunt there (extracts from several such grants will be 

 found in the Zoologist for 1878, p. 251, and 1880, p. 251). 

 Nor was it for diversion alone that the wild cat was hunted. 

 Its fur was much used as trimming for dresses, and in this 

 way was worn even by nuns at one time. Thus, in 

 Archbishop Corboyle's ' Canons,' anno ii27,it is ordained 

 ' that no abbess or nun use more costly apparel than such 

 as is made of lambs' or cats^ skins,' and as no other part of 

 the animal but the skin was of any use here, it grew into a 

 proverb that ' You can have nothing of a cat but her skin.' 



" The wild cat is believed to be now extinct, not only in 

 England and Wales, but in a great part of the south of 

 Scotland. About five years ago a Scottish naturalist resident 

 in Stirlingshire (Mr. J. A. Harvie Brown) took a great deal 

 of trouble, by means of printed circulars addressed to the 

 principal landowners throughout Scotland and the Isles, to 

 ascertain the existing haunts of the wild cat in that part of 

 the United Kingdom. The result of his inquiries, embody- 

 ing some very interesting information, was published in the 

 Zoologist for January, 1881. The replies w^hich he received 

 indicated pretty clearly, although perhaps unexpectedly, 

 that there are now no wild cats in Scotland south of a line 

 drawn from Oban on the west coast up the Brander Pass to 

 Dalmally, and thence following the borders of Perthshire 

 to the junction of the three counties of Perth, Forfar and 

 Aberdeen, northward to Tomintoul, and so to the city of 

 Inverness. We are assured that it is only to the northward 

 and westward of this line that the animal still keeps a 

 footing in suitable localities, finding its principal shelter in 



