22 



City cats make forays into the parks at night. A man em- 

 ployed to guard the birds in Central Park, New York, killed in 

 six months, from January to June, 1910, 161 cats.^ 



If we consider the number of vagrant and superfluous cats in 

 the city we well may wonder what the rate of increase may yet 

 become in the country where cats, mainly nocturnal, may wan- 

 der at will, unseen and unknown, and increase unchecked, except 

 perhaps by the cold and starvation of winter, which generally 

 they seem to survive. 



Numbers of Vagabond or Wild House Cats in the Country. 



Wild or feral house cats that pass their lives mainly in the 

 fields or woods are seen rarely by human eyes, except by those 

 of the hunter or naturalist. Therefore many people who have 

 never investigated the matter, and never have seen such cats, 

 find it hard to believe that they are numerous enough to be a 

 great menace to wild life, but nearly all my most observant 

 correspondents who roam the woods and fields report traces of 

 many cats. Mr. William Brewster of Cambridge, the Xestor of 

 New England ornithologists, says that he and his dogs frequently 

 have started cats from their resting places in woods and game 

 covers. He says, writing from Concord, that they are seldom 

 noticed, being shy, elusive and largely nocturnal, but that he 

 finds their tracks everywhere in the woods after the first snow- 

 fall. He asserts that his guides, James Bernier and William 

 Sargent of Upton, Me., trappers of large experience, assured him 

 some years ago that the forested parts of New England with 

 which they were familiar were numerously inhabited by woods 

 cats. Quite as many cats as other fur-bearing animals were 

 caught in traps even in "locations upward of thirty miles from 

 any house or clearing, and over the northern Maine line in the 

 Canadian woods." 



Mr. Charles E. Goodhue, naturalist of Penacook, N. H., says 

 that it is hard to tell whether or not cats are vagrant or wild, 

 but local trappers get many in their traps, and cats roam over 

 the country in every direction. Three trappers among my corre- 

 spondents corroborate this. Mr. Nathaniel Wentworth of Hudson, 

 N. H., former game commissioner of that State, says that he 

 has seen many cats sometimes miles away from any house, and 

 feels sure that more game birds are killed by them than by the 

 hunters, — an opinion expressed by very many others. Wm. C. 

 Adams, Esq., a member of the Massachusetts Commission on 



> Pearson, T. Gilbert: Bird-Lore, July-August, 1910, p. 174. 



