186 BRITISH MAMMALS 



use the wild cat's days were numbered. It lingered on in the 

 wilder parts of Northern England, such as the Lake District, down 

 to about the middle of the nineteenth century. It is not quite 

 certain yet whether it is absolutely extinct in North Wales. It is 

 safest to assume, however, that it is, and that there are no speci- 

 mens of Felis catus now existing in a really wild condition out 

 of Scotland, and here they are extinct everywhere south and east 

 of a line which, commencing at Oban on the western coast, would 

 pass through Perthshire to the vicinity of Aberdeen. It is certain 

 that they still exist in the Reay Forest in Caithness and in Assynt 

 Forest in Sutherland. They have always been unknown in the 

 Hebrides, and on any of the large islands off the west coast of 

 Scotland, except, perhaps, the island of Mull. Outside Great Britain 

 the range of the wild cat extends at the present day through 

 Northern Spain, the wilder parts of France, Germany, Switzer- 

 land, Hungary, Poland, South Russia, parts of the Balkan 

 Peninsula, Asia Minor, and Northern Persia. In Siberia its place 

 seems to be taken by Pallas's Cat (Felis manuF). 



