43 o CARNIVORES. 



And, as contrasted with all the wild species of the genus when tamed, the domestic 

 cat is conspicuous in alone manifesting any exalted development of affection 

 towards the human kind; for in many individual cases such affection, under 

 favouring circumstances, reaches a level fully comparable to that which it attains 

 in the dog." 



The writer then proceeds to observe that the most obvious trait in the 

 "emotional" character of the cat is its strongly-rooted attachment to places as 

 distinguished from persons, and it is considered that this is probably inherited from 

 an instinctive attachment to their lairs, characteristic of its wild ancestors. The 

 second feature in this aspect of the cat's nature is its partiality for torturing its 

 helpless prey a trait which Dr. Romanes ascribes to the delight of torturing for 

 torture's sake. 



As regards their higher faculties, the same author observes that " it is to be 

 noted as a general feature of interest that all cats, however domesticated they may 

 be, when circumstances require it, and often even quite spontaneously, throw off 

 with the utmost ease the whole mental clothing of their artificial experience, and 

 return in naked simplicity to the natural habits of their ancestors. This readiness 

 of cats to become feral is a strong expression of the shallow psychological influence 

 which prolonged domestication has here exerted, in comparison with that which it 

 has produced in the case of the dog. A pet terrier lost in the haunts of his ancestors 

 is almost as pitiable an object as a babe in the wood; a pet cat under similar 

 circumstances soon finds itself quite at home. The reason of this difference is, of 

 course, that the psychology of the cat, never having lent itself to the practical 

 uses of and intelligent dependency on man, has never, as in the case of the dog, 

 been under the cumulative influence of human agency in becoming further and 

 further bent away from its original and naturally imposed position of self-reliance, 

 so that, when a severance takes place between a cat and its human protectors, the 

 animal, inheriting unimpaired the transmitted intelligence of wild progenitors, 

 knows very well how to take care of itself." 



The terrible pests that domestic cats which indulge either in nocturnal poaching 

 expeditions, or which have taken to a completely wild life in the woods, become, is 

 known to all who have anything to do with rabbit-warrens or game-preserves. In 

 the Island of St. Helena, Darwin tells us that a few cats which had been originally 

 turned loose, in order to destroy the rats and mice, increased in numbers so as to 

 become a perfect plague. And the same observer mentions that in some parts of 

 South America the domestic cats which had run wild had become modified into 

 larger creatures of exceeding fierceness, inhabiting rocky hills. 



THE PAMPAS CAT (Felis pajeros). 



With the pampas cat, also known as the straw-cat or the grass-cat, we come 

 to the last of the South American cats, and also the only one absolutely confined to 

 the barren regions of Argentina and Patagonia, ranging to the extreme southern 

 limits of the latter country. From dwelling in such desert regions, the pampas 

 cat may, as Professor Mivart remarks, well be regarded as the New World repre- 

 sentative of Pallas's cat of the steppes of Central Asia. 



