forbush] THE DOMESTIC CAT 393 



"Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright, Fairfield, Conn., president of the 

 Connecticut Audubon Society, writes that in seven months, 

 twenty-eight cats have been shot on her twenty acres, although 

 the six nearest neighbors keep none. Mr. George C. Donaldson 

 of Hamilton, member of the bird committee of the Massachusetts 

 State Grange, avers that there are many cat tracks in the woods in 

 that region. Hundreds of similar assertions might be printed, 

 would space allow, but a few abbreviated statements follow : 



"Hardly a day passes that I do not see one or more," Nathan W. 

 Pratt, North Middleborough. "Saw at least twenty around a 

 heronry, and judging from the tracks after a night's rain there 

 must have been several times that number," Dr. C. L. Jones, 

 Falmouth. "Have seen a great many cats in the woods and about 

 abandoned farms and farm buildings that had not been occupied 

 in many years, and far from any occupied building," C. Harry 

 Morse, Belmont. "See many when shooting," Walter P. Hender- 

 son, Dover. "Have run across many in woods. Last year, 

 killed three in one day far from any house," Samuel Hoar, Concord. 

 "Legions of abandoned, vagrant, or wild cats," Bernard A. 

 Bailey, M.D., Wiscasset, Me. "About one-half the tracks in 

 the woods are cat's tracks," J. K. Jensen, Westwood. 



Cats Unfed by Owners. — "Many cats, never fed or half fed 

 by their owners, forced to range in search of food, roam far at 

 night. Mr. N. A. Nutt of South Ashburnham, whose work 

 takes him out during the latter half of the night, has seen cats 

 coming from a patch of woods on their way back to the village, 

 across the railroad track, so wet with dew as to appear as if they 

 had been plunged into water. Countless village cats, farm, stray 

 and feral cats extend the rapacious influence of the species through- 

 out the land. Dr. Frank M. Chapmann of the American Museum 

 of Natural History, New York City, believes that there are not 

 less than 25,000,000 cats in the United States, and that there may 

 be twice that number. 



The Cat a Birdcatcher in Modern Times. — "In every land, in 

 every tongue, the cat has been noted as a slayer of birds. Maister 

 Salmon, who published 'The Compleat English Physician' in 

 1690, describes the cat as the mortal enemy of the rat, mouse 

 'and every sort of bird which it seizes as its prey.' The French 

 and Germans, particularly, have deplored the destruction of birds 

 by cats. M. Xavier Raspail, in an article on the protection of 



