To Mountain Tarn 



from physician who persisted in seeing health 

 where was none. I did not make the situation. 

 The peculiar mischief wrought, and the vague 

 uncertainty being left behind, are none of my 

 doing. My wish is to point out the double 

 agency of destruction which persecution lets 

 loose the blight of crossing on the doomed 

 species. To rejoice because a few wild cats 

 granting them true are found here and there 

 amid a legion of tame cats is to live in a fool's 

 paradise. Either something like the old pre- 

 dominance will have to be restored, or they will 

 have to go out at the one door or the other. I 

 deserve better than blame, even from the opti- 

 mist, whose natural history may be getting rather 

 musty, for providing him with fresh matter for 

 curious speculation. 



By all means give space and liberty to breed 

 and gather. If one man has resolved to keep 

 his hands from killing, to make the cat and the 

 marten free to the rough woods of Knoydart, 

 nor grudge them their share, I cry " Bravo ! " 

 No harm will come from the charge of whimsical 

 forbearance on the lips of those who are not like 

 minded, nor worth minding, save for the mischief 

 they do. There may be still a chance of some of the 

 old strain. Even if not altogether wild, they are the 

 nearest we can now get, and that is something. 

 Under wild conditions, the bent will be toward 

 the wilder ancestry. A modified persecution that 



47 



