' Thine is the lore of Ra and Rameses. 



THERE was — if we may trust the Arabic 

 chronicles as set down by that devout 

 scholar, Damirei — no cat in the Garden 

 of Paradise. Lion cubs and tiger cubs, little leo- 

 pards and little panthers, Eve had in numbers with- 

 out doubt ; but no pussy to grace and decorate her 

 domestic hearth. How far this loss was responsible 

 for the lamentable ennui which, Charles Lamb says, 

 forced our first parents to sin themselves out of 

 Eden, it would be difficult to determine ; but in 

 that desolate world of toil which lay beyond the 

 gleaming gates and sacred rivers of Paradise, no cat 

 was found to comfort the sad exiles on their way. 

 She sprang into existence at the Deluge ; for dur- 

 ing the long weeks in which the Ark floated over 

 the waste of waters, the rats and the mice increased 



