216 RABBITS, CATS, AND CAVIES 



Wild Cats are sometimes taken in traps, but, perhaps, 

 more often by shooting, in the latter mode it is dangerous 

 to merely wound them, for they have been frequently 

 known to attack the person who injured them, and their 

 strength and courage are so great as to render them 

 rather formidable antagonists. 



At a village called Bainborough, situated between 

 Bainsley and Doncaster, in Yorkshire, there is a tradition 

 of a serious conflict which once took place between a man 

 and a Wild Cat. The inhabitants relate that the fight 

 commenced in an adjoining wood, and was continued from 

 hence up to the very porch of the village church, where 

 it is said to have ended fatally to both combatants, for 

 each died of the wounds received. 



A rude painting in the church commemorates the 

 event, and the natives of the place profess to show marks 

 of blood stains on the stones in the church porch, which 

 no amount of washing has been able to remove. 



I should have said that another argument against the 

 idea that the Wild Cat is the original of our Felis 

 Domestica, is that, at that period when the former were 

 most plentiful, and to be met with in most of their likely 

 haunts, the present variety of domestic cat was almost 

 unknown in this country, and was evidently an animal of 

 foreign importation, and, as I have before stated, so 

 highly estemed for its vermin-destroying qualities as to 

 form the subject of royal statutes for its protection and 

 preservation. 



That there are hundreds, if not thousands, of cats 

 living in a state of nature in the woods and dense parts 



