32 



says that though cats are outside the law, and therefore may be 

 killed with impunity, their numbers are renewed from the villages 

 incessantly to such an extent that not a night passes without 



-h.4. 



traces of these "abominable marauders." Of 67 birds' nests 

 observed from April to August, only 26 prospered; at least 15 

 certainly were ' destroyed by cats, and others may have been.^ 

 Baron Hans von Berlepsch, the first German authority on the 

 protection of birds, after forty years' experience says that where 

 birds are to be protected the domestic cat must not be allowed 

 at large. The above are but a few citations, many of which 

 might be made, to show that the cat always has been recognized 

 as a menace to bird life. Many present day cat lovers, however, 

 claim that their cats kill no birds, or very few, "not more than 

 one or two a year," and that the destructiveness of the cat to-day 

 has been exaggerated to the last degree. Hence, it will be neces- 

 sary to give voluminous evidence of the bird-kilhng propensities 

 of the animal. First, we will turn the pages of some of the 

 volumes written by cat lovers. Harrison Weir avers that he was 

 able to teach three cats not to kill birds that he fed about the 

 door, but he never could break them of the habit of destroying 

 many birds' nests. ^ The destruction of nests by cats at night 

 usually is accompanied with that of the mother birds and the 

 young. Sometimes only the eggs are ruined, but cats do not 

 attack nests unless they are occupied. 



Miss Helen Winslow says that her aunt in Greenfield had a 

 cat that was in the habit of catching his own breakfast early 

 each summer morning before the family was up, — a very com- 

 mon habit by the way. Invariably, she says, just before her 

 aunt's rising hour the cat brought in a nice fat robin, unharmed, 

 and penned it in the corner of the kitchen, apparently as a gift 

 for the aunt. Although the bird always was set free the cat 

 continued to catch one each morning having first caught its own 

 breakfast. It would be interesting to know how many birds that 

 cat ate that season beside those that it brought in.. The re- 

 markable assertion here is that the cat was able to produce a 

 robin every morning, for it must not be supposed that it was able 

 to catch the same robin many times in succession. One or two 



' Bulletin de Is Sooi«t< Zoologique de France, Vol. IS, 1804, pp. 142-148. 

 * Weir, Harrioon: Our C*ta and All about Them, 1889, p. 15. 



