THE WILD-CAT 



THE wild-cat is now rare in this country. Although I 

 have spent a great part of my life in the most mountainous 

 districts of Scotland, where killing vermin formed the 

 gamekeeper's principal business, and often my own recrea- 

 tion, I have never seen more than five or six genuine wild- 

 cats. Many, on reading this, will perhaps wonder at my 

 statement, and even give it a flat contradiction, by alleg- 

 ing the numbers that have come under their own notice. 

 Nay, I was even gravely told by a gentleman from the 

 south of England, -a keen observer and fond of natural 

 history, that there were wild-cats there,* and the skin of a 

 cat killed in one of the southern counties was sent to me as 

 a proof; this, I need hardly say, was the large and sleek 

 coat of an overgrown Tom, whose ancestors, no doubt, had 

 purred upon the hearth-rug. 



* I have been frequently assured that wild-cats have been killed on the 

 Cumberland and Westmoreland hills ; but, never having seen any speci- 

 mens, I cannot speak from my own knowledge. There is no doubt that 

 martens exist in some of the most hilly and wooded districts of England. 



