DOMESTIC CATS. 513 



after having been sliot at once and missed. The cat has, Reugg-er 

 informs us (^ Saugethiere Paraguay,' p. 214), learnt to kill the rattle- 

 snake in Paraguay, and I have read that the felis acquired this 

 self-same snake-killing dexterity in the island of Naxos, but I 

 have not the reference at hand at this moment. Herein it has by 

 practice under the stimulus of constant provocation come to re- 

 semble the mustelines in what is instinctive to them : but though it 

 will steal cream, as Falstaff told us, it will never, like the martens, 

 steal eggs nor honey nor take to burrows in the way of refuge. 



I am aware that there are both scholars and men of science to 

 whom disquisitions such as these will seem but the strenua inertia 

 kominis male feriati. Critics such as Pope, and, I regret to have to 

 add, such as Hallam (see ' Literature of Modern Europe,' i. 2']j)3 speak 

 of such attempts to preserve the unities of time and place in Faunae 

 as in dramas, the one with the cynical sneering giggle, the other 

 with the elevated and refrigerating yet half-compassionate contempt 

 congenial to their respective schools of literature and of politics. 

 But to the scholar I would say that, though in these matters as in 

 many others by increasing knowledge we increase also sorrow, or 

 at least our susceptibility for annoyance, it is rare indeed to find 

 a writer of the classical periods making blunders in the way of 

 putting animals into places which they never were found in, except 

 in connexion with the circus of olden or the menagerie of modern 

 times, which are so rife in all but our very best modern writers. 

 Modern catalogues of African mammals show that Virgil did not 

 deserve the criticism as to the presence of the stag there which 

 Pope in the ' Martinus Scriblerus ' puts into the mouth of Bentley as 

 unworthy of any one else ; and that Lipsius need not have ex- 

 plained away, as he does (' Elect." ii. 4), the phrase Lihystidos ursae. 

 The placing of the lion by Theocritus, i. 73, rrivov x&> 'f bpviJoTo 

 Xediv av€K\av(Te davovra, is in fact the only anachronism or ana- 

 topism of the kind which my memory furnishes me with from the 

 writers of the best periods of Greek and lloman literature. 



To the man of science I may say in the words of Goethe : — 



'Musset im Naturbebrachten 

 Immer eins wie alles achten 

 Nichts ist drinnen, nichts ist draussen : 

 Denn was innen, das ist aussen 

 So ergreifet ohne Saumniss 

 Heilig offentlich Geheimniss.* 

 Ll 



