CATS. 61 



down rabbits than are stoats or weasels, and estimates that cats will 

 kill more rabbits in a month than one of the others will in six 

 months. 



Mr. B. C. Aston, in a paper on the Kaikoura Mountains, speaks 

 of the half-wild cats which are found about deserted fencers' and 

 musterers' camps as retaining "all their love for man's comrade- 

 ship if encouraged, but they invariably refuse to eat anything 

 that they have not killed themselves. They probably exist on 

 rabbits, birds, and mice. As a result of their hunting habits 

 their chest and forelegs are largely developed, and they have a 

 look different from the ordinary cat, being leaner, and quicker in 

 action." 



Wild cats, so my -son Dr. Allan Thomson tells me, are the bane 

 of the island sanctuaries of New Zealand, being present on Kapiti 

 Island, Little Barrier Island, and Stephen Island, in which last 

 they kill and eat the tuatara. They have been reduced to small 

 numbers by shooting, but their complete extermination has not yet 

 been accomplished. 



When the Russian Commander Bellingshausen visited the 

 Macquaries in 1820 he found numbers of wild cats hid among 

 the foliage. There were at the time, however, two parties of 

 traders (seal-hunters?) on the island, one of thirteen and the 

 other of twenty-seven men, and these probably accounted for 

 the cats. 



Captain Musgrave, who was a castaway from the schooner 

 " Graf ton," when she was wrecked on the Auckland Islands in 

 1864, found a cat in a trap more than a year after the date of 

 the wreck. " She soon cleared the hut of mice, which were dread- 

 fully common." 



In 1868 Mr. H. H. Tr avers, in his account of a visit to the 

 Chatham Islands, states that wild cats were very abundant, and that 

 they destroyed a great number of the indigenous birds. 



WILD DOGS. 



It may seem strange to speak of dogs as wild animals in New 

 Zealand, and it is questionable whether there are any wild dogs 

 at the present time, but in the early days of settlement they were 

 fairly abundant, and were truly feral. Dogs are the most 

 thoroughly domesticated of animals, and in none has the moral 



