OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 31 



to encourage the destroying of them I allowed a pound of salt butter 

 for every score of rats tliey, i. e. his sailors, catched. It is worth 

 observing in this place that the rats were so ravenous as to eat several 

 of our parrots alive, and even to steal away our breeclies and stockings 

 in the night and to bite us severely." Here we have a strong corrobo- 

 ration of the probabilities of the tale of Whittington's Cat, both in 

 beai-iug testimony as to the value of a cat, the abundance of rats 

 in Guinea in the time of Monsieur Barbot, 1680, and the source from 

 whence that people received their cats. And this draws forth an 

 interesting inquiry as to when the cat was first domesticated, and from 

 whence we received it. It is not a little singular that neither the cat 

 nor the rat are mentioned at all in the Eible, cither in the Old or Xew 

 Testament. We know that cats were highly prized, and even had 

 divine honors paid to them in Egypt. "We read inGesner,* "Feles anti- 

 quitus non erant mansuefactce, vivehant in agris inde urbes et domos 

 replevere." Cats were not tamed of olden time, they lived in the 

 fields, and from thence filled cities and houses. The Pannoniau cats 

 were higlily valued by the Romans. Martial * says that Pudens sent 

 a present of one to his lady love. 



Jacobus Diaconus, in the Life of Saint Gregory the Great,' who 

 died A.D. 604, speaking of that mild and benevolent pontiff, after he 

 had retired from all secular employments to live in a monastery, 

 says, ' ' He possessed nothing in the world except a cat, which he 

 carried in his bosom, frequently caressing it, as his sole companion." 

 Mahomet,-'^the great prophet of the Turks, who lived about the same time 

 as Gregoiy the Great, was also extremely attached to a cat which ho 

 kept in the sleeve of his gown, and carefully fed with his own hands. 



b Conrad Gesner, Med. Togur. -ffw^. ^wma/, fol. under J^t'ft's. Frankfort, 1620. 

 e Epigr. lib. xii. — " Pannonicas nobis ntimquam dfdit Umbria Cattas* 



JMavult hcec domitKe mittere dona Pudens." 

 Umbria has never produced Pannonian cats. Pudens begs to send a present of 

 one to bis lady love. 



e Lib. vi., c. 24. / "Wood's Zoology, vol. 1, 229. 



* Cat, with little variety, is the same in most languages : — 



English, Cat ; Latin, Cattus, Catta ; Hebrew, 7]JlD Catul ; Saracenic, Katt ; 



GrecJc, Ka7rrr]g ; Modern Greek, kutiq ; Italian, Gatto - a ; Spanish, Gato - a ; 



French, Chat ; German, Katz ; Ilhjrian, Kotzka. 



E 



