DOMESTIC CATS. 509 



Mustela herminea, could not have failed to have had the well- 

 marked club-shaped black tip of its much larger tail mentioned in 

 contradistinction to that of the common weasel, Mustela vulgaris, 

 if these two animals had been the pair contrasted as yaXri and Iktls ; 

 and it may further be remarked that the comparatively small bulk 

 of these animals^ as also of the Sardinian weasel, Mustela hoccamela, 

 which has likewise had its claims advocated for the title of yaAi}, 

 would have very sufficiently prevented them from being the ' fine 

 thieves' which we know from Simonides, Aristophanes and Ba- 

 brius, the yakal were. In looking over my notes of the anatomy of 

 the last marten, a male which came into my hands, I find that 

 there was upon its linea alba a space of two inches in length almost 

 bare of hair to direct attention to the fact mentioned by Aristotle, 

 ' Hist. Anim.' ii. 3. 5, ^at yap rj yaXr) oarovv exct to albolov, and to 

 explain how he came to class this comparatively small animal as 

 regards this carnivorous peculiarity with animals so much larger as 

 the fox and the wolf. 



I will conclude the question of the marten cat with the lines 

 from Nicander_, the contemporary of Theocritus, which Schneider 

 gives, 1. c, iv. p. 49, and I will add to them, what Schneider does 

 not in extenso, viz. the commentary of the Scholiast as given in the 

 Editio Princeps of Aldus Manutius, printed 1499, before the art of 

 printing was sixty years old. I give the lines and the scholium, as 

 both are much to the points just discussed and dismissed, and 

 neither are hackneyed in the literature of the subject. Nicander, 

 'Theriaca,' 1. 196: — 



"Miopcpf) 8' Ixvevrao KivanreTOV oTov dfivdpTjs. 



JATTtSoS ^ t' OpVtai KaTOlKldlTjfflV oKidpov 



fiaUrai, If vnvoio KaOapnd^aca ircTevpcov. 



To these lines are laterally apposed in the cramped contractions of 

 the edition specified, the following words of the Scholiast ^ : ajjLvbprjs 



^ I hope I shall not be considered presumptuous for saying that having seen the Pine 

 Marten or Yellow-breasted Marten escape ' like a shadow,' as Longfellow describes the 

 hare as doing, from the midst of an assemblage of men and dogs of all dimensions when 

 smoked out from under some rocks, I believe I have a better idea of what Nicander, 

 who may have been similarly privileged, meant by dfx.vdpfjs than the Scholiast had. 

 Great as was the creature's need, its agility was more than commensurate with it ; and 

 whilst the words ahiit, excessit, evasit, and alas, for the interests of anatomical investi- 

 gation, efagit also, are but weak symbols to express its speed, it takes a whole 

 hexameter-ful of imagery to give the picturesque effect which its lithe abstraction of 

 itself from jawa and paws produced upon me. - It fled 



'Par levibus veutis volucrique simillima somno.* 



