THE WILD CAT OF BRITAIN. 163 



the great deer forests. Thus we see that the wild cat is 

 being gradually driven northward before advancing civili- 

 sation and the increased supervision of moors and forests. 

 Just as the reindeer in the twelfth century was driven north- 

 ward from England and found its last home in Caithness, 

 and as the wolf followed it a few centuries later, so we may 

 expect one day that the wild cat will come to be numbered 

 amongst the ' extinct British animals.' 



*' A recent writer in the new edition of the ' Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica' (art. Caf) expresses the opinion that the wild cat 

 still exists in Wales and in the north of England, but gives 

 no proof of its recent occurrence there. From time to time 

 we see reports in the newspapers to the effect that a wild 

 cat has been shot or trapped in some out-of-the-way part of 

 the country ; but it usually turns out to be a large example 

 of the domestic cat, coloured like the wild form. It is 

 remarkable that when cats in England are allowed to return 

 to a feral state, their offspring, in the course of generations, 

 show a tendency to revert to the wild type of the country ; 

 partly, no doubt, in consequence of former interbreeding 

 with the wild species when the latter was common through- 

 out all the wooded portions of the country, and partly 

 because the light-coloured varieties of escaped cats, being 

 more readily seen and destroyed, are gradually eliminated, 

 while the darker wild type is perpetuated- The great 

 increase in size observable in the offspring of escaped 

 domestic cats i^ no doubt due to continuous living on 

 freshly-killed, warm-blooded animals, and to the greater use 

 of the muscles which their new mode of life requires. In 

 this way I think we may account for the size and appearance 

 of the so-called ' wild cats ' which are from time to time 

 reported south of the Tweed. 



" Perhaps the last genuine wild cat seen in England was 

 the one shot by Lord Ravensworth at Eslington, Northumber- 

 land, in 1853 ;* although so recently as March, 1883, a cat 

 was shot in Bullington Wood, Lincolnshire, which in point 



* "Trans. Tyneside Nat. Field Club," 1864, vol. vi. p. 123. 



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