THE POWER OF FASCINATION 141 



thought he must be going mad, and all the Indian tales 

 of enchanted princes and fairies, werewolves, and the 

 like flashed through his recollection. The next moment 

 he saw a man very cleverly disguised in a leopard's 

 skin, with a well-stuffed head, and a bow and arrow 

 in one paw, standing before him. The man so dressed 

 was a professional fowler, who said that in that disguise 

 he could always approach near enough to shoot the 

 birds with a bow and arrow, and sometimes to catch 

 them in his hand. 



As a cat, when left in a room with a caged bird, 

 can always kill it if it gives way to temptation, it is 

 commonly believed that the cat " fascinates " the bird. 

 " How else," asks the sorrowing owner, " could it 

 have hurt the bird, when the cage was so large that 

 its occupant could easily have remained safe in the 

 middle ? " The fact is that the cat does exactly the 

 contrary. It frightens the bird into violent move- 

 ments, and makes it dash from side to side of the 

 cage. Its persecutor strikes with lightning speed at 

 the bird as it dashes against the bars, first on one 

 side and then on the other, until it is wounded and 

 weakened and can be clutched and dragged out. If 

 a bird is killed or injured by a cat when in its cage, 

 quantities of feathers will be found lying about, the 

 result of this clutching and buffeting, whereas when a 

 cat kills a bird in the open it is scarcely " feathered " 

 at all. If the cage is small, the cat climbs on to the 

 top, lies on its belly, and hanging a foreleg down on 

 either side, pursues the same tactics. 



Some instances of seeming fascination are simply 



