The Cat Tribe 



61 



vermin, the wild cat haunts the shores of lakes and rivers, and it is therefore easy to know 

 where to set a trap for them. Having caught and killed one of the colony, the rest of them 

 are sure to be taken if the body of their slain relative is left in the same place not far from 

 their usual hunting-ground and surrounded with traps, as every wild cat passing that way 

 will to a certainty come to it." 



The wild cat ranges from the far north of Scotland, across Europe and Northern Asia, 

 to the northern slopes of the Himalaya. It has always been known as one of the fiercest and 

 wildest of the cats, large or small. The continual ill-temper of these creatures is remarkable. 

 In the experience of the keepers of menageries there is no other so intractably savage. One 

 presented to the Zoological Gardens by Lord Lilford some eight years ago still snarls and spits 

 at any one who comes near it, even the keeper. 



The food of the wild cat is grouse, mountain-hares, rabbits, small birds, and probably fish 

 caught in the shallow waters when chance offers. It is wholly nocturnal; consequently no 

 one ever sees it hunting for prey. Though it has long been confined to the north and north- 

 west of Scotland, it is by no means on the verge of extinction. The deer-forests are saving 

 it to some extent, as they did the golden eagle. Grouse and hares are rather in the way 

 when deer are being stalked; consequently the wild cat and the eagle are not trapped or 

 shot. The limits of its present fastnesses were recently fixed by careful Scotch naturalists 

 at the line of the Caledonian Canal. Mr. Harvie Brown, in 1880, said that it only survived 

 in Scotland north of a line running from Oban to the junction of the three counties 

 of Perth, Forfar, and Aberdeen, and thence through Banffshire to Inverness. But the 

 conclusion of a writer in the Edinburgh Review of July, 1898, in a very interesting article 

 on the survival of British mammals, has been happily contradicted. He believed that it only 

 survived in the deer-forests of Inverness and Sutherlandshire. The wild cats shown in the 

 illustrations of these pages were caught a year later as far south as Argyllshire. The father and 

 two kittens were all secured, practically unhurt, and purchased by Mi. Percy Leigh Pemberton for 

 his collection of British mammals at Ashford. in Kent. This gentleman has had great success 

 in preserving his wild cats. They, as well as others martens, polecats, and other small 

 carnivora are fed on fresh wild rabbits killed in a warren near; consequently they are in 

 splendid condition. The old "torn" wild cat, snarling with characteristic ill-humour, was well 

 supported by the wild and savage little kittens, which exhibited all the family temper. Shortly 



Sit permission of Percy Leigh Pemberton, Esq. 



EUROPEAN WILD CAT. 



The British representative of this species is rapiuly becoming extinct. The specimen whose portrait i* given here was caught in Argyllshire. 



