CARNIVORA 63 



immense size and were game to the last if attacked ; in fact no dog would 

 tackle one single-handed. They were always in the pink of condition, 

 which may be accounted for by the abundance of feed available in the shape 

 of wekas, ducks and rats, with perhaps a dead sheep or bullock occasionally. 

 When the rabbit poisoning came in that class or variety of cat disappeared 

 along with the wild pig and the weka. The reason for the extermination 

 of the cat is because it prefers the entrails to the flesh. Since that time up 

 to the present cats have been turned out in considerable numbers, but the 

 rabbit-trapping has effectually prevented their increase, and the survivors 

 still retain their original colours, that is black, black and white, grey, grey 

 and white, etc., but they are much smaller than the wild cat of forty years 

 ago. My opinion is that had the original cat survived till to-day the colour 

 would have invariably been grey, or rather grey-striped. 



Mr H. C. Weir of Ida Valley Station, Otago, states that on high 

 country where rabbit-traps are seldom if ever used, they grow to a 

 very considerable size, and are most commonly of a grey colour, but 

 yellow, grey and white, and black are also to be met with. He adds: 

 " I cannot say I ever saw any approaching the tiger- like stripe of the 

 home country Wild Cat, and I have seen a good few of them in the 

 wilds of Sutherlandshire, Scotland." 



Some people consider that wild cats are responsible for much of 

 the failure which has followed the constantly-renewed attempts to 

 naturalise game birds. At the annual meeting of the Wellington 

 Society in 1898, a member said: "cats are more destructive to game 

 than all the hawks, weasels and stoats in the colony. Most of the bush 

 coverts are full of these cats, a fact which he himself proved near 

 Fielding where, with the assistance of traps baited with smoked fish, 

 he caught many. " I think they may have contributed to some extent 

 to this failure, but only in a few parts of the country, and then chiefly 

 in the neighbourhood of settlements. I do not think wild cats have 

 had much to do with the extermination of game. 



Mr B. C. Aston, in a paper on the Kaikoura Mountains, speaks 

 of the half-wild cats which are found about deserted fencers' and 

 musterers' camps, as retaining 



all their love for man's comradeship if encouraged, but they invariably 

 refuse to eat anything that they have not killed themselves. They probably 

 exist on rabbits, birds and mice. As a result of their hunting habits their 

 chest and foreleg muscles are largely developed, and they have a different 

 look to the ordinary domestic cat, being leaner, and quicker in action. 



When the Russian Commander Bellingshausen visited the Mac- 

 quaries in 1820 he found numbers of wild cats, which hid among the 

 foliage. There were at the time, however, two parties of traders (seal 

 hunters ?) on the island, one of 13 and the other of 27 men, and these 

 probably accounted for the cats. 



