EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 



exception, the Indo-European names are all 

 different. In Latin we have felis, in Greek 

 cuAovpos ; but we know otherwise that the 

 Greeks and Romans had no domestic cats, but 

 kept a kind of weasel to destroy their rats and 

 mice. In our own and most other modern Euro- 

 pean languages the principal name of the animal 

 is borrowed from Latin ; but the Latin catus is 

 itself an imported word from a non-Aryan 

 source. It is the Syriac kato, Arabic kitt, indi- 

 cating that the cat was introduced into Europe 

 from the Levant, at a comparatively recent 

 period. 



But whether the Old Aryans had domestic 

 cats or not, they certainly needed them, for the 

 word mouse occurs, with hardly any variation, 

 in nearly all the Indo-European languages. In 

 Latin, Greek, Old Norse, Old German, and 

 Old English it is mtis ; in Russian we have 

 myshi, in Bohemian mysh, in Persian mush, in 

 Sanskrit musha y the "pilfering creature," the 

 " little thief." 



Flies are also to be numbered among the 

 household pests of Aryana Vaejo ; the old name 

 was makshi, the " buzzing creature," and is pre- 

 served in Zend and the modern Indian lan- 

 guages. In Europe we have Lith. musse, Bohem. 

 musska, Lat. musca, O. H. G. muccha, Swed. and 

 Old Eng. mygge, Eng. midge, of which the di- 

 minutive midget, or " little fly," has been applied 

 126 



