IV COL UR - VA RIA TION IN THE CA T 



111 



carefully followed out, of the effect of a general change in the 

 external conditions, and particularly in the nourishment, on 

 the modification of organisms, another proof of the inheritance 

 of acquired characters. 



Our domestic cat is certainly derived from the fawn- 

 coloured cat (Felis maniculata). The two cannot he distin- 

 guished, as I have proved in the journal HumMdt, 1886, 

 either by the skeleton or by any other really decisive criterion. 

 Still the fawn-coloured cat, apart from her yellow-gray colour, 

 seems to be somewhat more slenderly built and also to have 

 somewhat shorter and smoother hair than our domestic cat 

 usually has. The latter, moreover, in consequence of the 

 protection which it enjoys in the house, has gradually varied 

 much in colour and marking, while the wild (although amon^ 

 the Niam-Mam, according to Schweinfarth, it is half tamed 

 and replaces the domestic cat) fawn-coloured cat in Africa is 

 adapted to the colour of the desert, and has retained the 

 original transverse stripes, which so often occur even in the 

 domestic cat on a gray ground. This transverse striping and 

 gray colour is also evident in the wild cat, wliich, in my 

 opinion, is likewise to be regarded, not as a proper species, 

 but as a variety of the Felis maniculata domestica, which is 

 developing into a species. Special breeding, selection, has 

 evidently not been much applied to the markings of the cat 

 in Egypt^ where it has been domesticated from the most 

 ancient times. The pleasure of reproduction has been freely 

 permitted there to all cats ; scarcely any cats were killed, for 

 the cat was sacred. Thus we have in the variety of marking 

 in the house cat, not something produced by selection, but 

 somethincj which has arisen from the effect of external environ- 

 ment, firstly from the absence of selection, and ultimately from 

 some direct causes of modification. 



I have pointed out that this variation also is not alto- 

 gether irregular, but exhibits certain fundamental lines. 



