THE WILD CAT. 339 



from a long line of ancestors unacquainted with 

 man's threshold, which have bred for generations 

 past with renegades and cut-throats of the same 

 stamp, till they have formed a race of their own 

 a race as much distinct from the tame cat as they 

 themselves are distinct from Felis catus. Those 

 who would deny all strain of the wild cat in the 

 domestic species should bear these points in mind, 

 for it would certainly seem that the tame cat 

 has more points in common with Felis catus than 

 it has with Felis caff'ra, from which sprang the 

 domestic cats of Egypt. It may be taken that the 

 offspring of domestic animals which run wild ulti- 

 mately return to the strain from which they sprang, 

 and there is no doubt whatever that domestic cats 

 left undisturbed to breed in the mountains would 

 finally produce a strain so closely resembling the 

 wild cat of our own island that, except in 

 point of size, it would be hard to distinguish one 

 from the other. Climatic conditions may, of 

 course, account for the acquired similarity, for 

 the conditions in our own mountains are widely 

 different from those of Africa, Arabia, and Syria, 

 the lands responsible for Felis cqff'ra ; so that 

 a cat which has become wild by living among 

 wild conditions is as likely to be influenced by 

 those conditions as it is by a far-off ancestry which 

 was probably mixed to begin with if, indeed, one 

 can begin with a mixture ! 



There is, also, another possible explanation for 

 the acquired similarities referred to. At one time 

 Felis catus was far more plentiful than to-day, 

 existing not only in the mountains, but everywhere 

 that woodland shelter made its existence possible ; 

 indeed, it existed in England long before it existed 

 in Scotland. Thus our original stock of tame 



