200 FACULTIES OF BIRDS. 



birds and mice they could catch, and were so wild as 

 scarcely to permit themselves to be seen, much less 

 approached, yet no instance ever came to our know- 

 ledge of their having made their domicile in the woods ; 

 but they uniformly slept and littered in the least 

 frequented barns and other out-houses of farms. 

 This we are inclined to attribute to their finding- 

 such places warmer than any they could discover in 

 the woods, and to the supply of mice they might find 

 there when birds were less plentiful ; for it could not 

 well be traced to their attachment to man, whom they 

 always fled from as fearfully as a fox would do. 



A very particular instance of this once came under 

 our observation. A cat, which had been long re- 

 marked as one of the wildest of those which frequented 

 a barn on the borders of a wood in Ayrshire so wild 

 indeed as to be seldom seen was several times during 

 a sharp frost observed, with no little surprise, to pass 

 and repass into the adjacent farm-house, which it had 

 not for some years been known either to enter or 

 approach. It might have been inferred that it was 

 compelled by hunger, had not this been the best 

 season for catching birds ; but, in one of its stealthy 

 visits, it was seen snugly coiled up beside a baby in 

 the cradle, to the no small horror of the mother, who 

 imagined, in accordance with the popular prejudice, 

 that it had come to suck away the baby's breath. All 

 we could say to persuade her of the impossibility of the 

 cat doing this was of no avail, and orders were imme- 

 diately given to every servant on the farm to kill the 

 poor cat wherever she could be found. Her caution 

 and agility, however, were long successful in saving 

 her, and though the persecution she thus experienced 

 rendered her, if possible, much wilder than before, 

 yet she was not thereby deterred not even after being 

 wounded by a pitch-fork, and her leg lamed by 

 throwing a hatchet at her from paying a daily visit 



