344 THE WILD CAT. 



this wise is told by Colquhoun in his absorbing 

 book, The Moor and the Loch. 



The food of the wild cat, then, may be summed 

 up as follows. Like all the cats, it prefers an 

 abundance of small game to worthier quarry, but 

 where small game is insufficiently plentiful, or too 

 difficult to catch, it will kill anything it can hold. 

 Its destructiveness on game-reserves is, therefore, 

 determined by the proportion of game-birds to 

 other kinds of food. If rabbits and small birds 

 are everywhere, it probably does little to bring 

 about the unrelenting persecution to which it is 

 subjected ; if, on the other hand, small game is 

 scarce, and the creatures man wishes to preserve 

 possess the country-side in excelsis, then naturally 

 the wild cat makes a business of catching and 

 killing those creatures which were its birthright 

 ages before man took to controlling for his own 

 ends the populace of the woods. 



The case of the wild cat to-day is exactly 

 analogous to that of the pine-marten, in dealing 

 with which I have endeavoured to set forth a 

 common-sense view as regards ultra-rare animals. 

 At this juncture it is interesting to call to mind 

 that, in tracing back the history of the domestic 

 cat, we find that it superseded the pine-marten 

 as a domestic exterminator of mice and rats, the 

 pine-marten having an earlier standing as a beast 

 associated with man's hearth than has the tame 

 cat of to-day. 



METHODS OF FEEDING. 



The wild cat's method of feeding is to seize its 

 prey and depart with it into the timber leopard 

 fashion. If there is no timber into which to 

 go, it proceeds, snarling and spluttering as its 



