8 The Book of Cats. 



whence the light is reflected with a kind of yellowish 

 radiation somewhat similar to the eyes of cats. 



Catkins are imperfect flowers hanging from trees 

 in the manner of a rope or cat's-tail. 



Cat's-meat, Cat-thyme, and Cat's-foot are the 

 names of herbs ; Cat's head of an apple, and also of 

 a kind of fossil. Cat-silver is a fossil. Cat's-tail 

 is a seed or a long round substance growing on 

 a nut-tree. 



A Cat-fish is a shark in the West Indies. Gua- 

 nahani, or Cat Island, a small island of the 

 Bahama group, in the West Indies, is supposed to 

 be so called because wild Cats of large size used 

 to infest it, but I can find no particulars upon the 

 subject in the works of writers on the West Indies. 



In the North of England, a common expression 

 of contempt is to call a person Cat-faced. Artists 

 call portraits containing two-thirds of the figure 

 Kit-cat size. With little boys in the street a Cat 

 is a dreadfully objectionable plaything, roughly 

 cut out of a stick or piece of wood, and sharpened 

 at each end. Those whose way to business lies 

 through low neighbourhoods, and who venture upon 

 short cuts, well know from bitter experience that 

 at a certain period of the year the tip-cat season sets 

 in with awful severity, and then it is not safe for 



