DOMESTIC CATS. 503 



up again. It is not likely that any direct alliance subsists between 

 any musteline and any rodent, but the more arboreal and egg- 

 loving mustelines, such as the martens, may by robbing the nests 

 of the rapacious birds, such as the carrion crows^ the great enemies 

 of the squirrels, indirectly but most efficiently favour the spread of 

 these latter creatures. But the subject of the interdependence of 

 the two kingdoms of animal and vegetable life is a much larger one 

 than the one I propose to deal with here ; and I have but intro- 

 duced the mention of it to show what broad and distant views may 

 be gained by attentive gazing through what may seem to be but 

 narrow casements. I shall arrange what I have to say under two 

 heads, I shall first attempt to prove that, though the ancient 

 Greeks and Romans had not domesticated the cat, Felis domesticus, 

 in classical times, this animal was nevertheless domesticated in 

 Western Europe at an earlier period than is commonly assigned^. 

 And secondly, I shall address myself to showing that the white- 

 breasted marten, Musiela foina, which is known also as the ' Beech 

 Marten ' or ' Stone Marten,' was functionally the ' Cat ' of the 

 ancients. A list of the difi'erent works and memoirs which I have 

 consulted or read upon the topics I have written upon will be found 

 appended to this article. Either my conclusions or my premises, or 

 both, will be found by any one who will verify the references I 

 have given to difier more or less from those of most or all the 

 writers I have quoted, in all or most of the points which we treat 

 of in common; but I have abstained from the invidious task of 

 specifying in detail the various errors, small and great, into which, 

 I think, my predecessors, great and small, have, Sir G. C. Lewis not 

 excepted, fallen. 



A few words may be employed at the outset in elucidating one 

 of the few universally conceded points in this history, and showing 

 that the classical writers knew nothing of any domesticated Felis in 

 their own countries, and that Mr. George Scharf ^ has consequently 

 fallen into an anachronism in introducing a figure of our cat into 

 his vignette in illustration of the telling of Lord Macaulay's tale of 

 the Battle of the Lake Begillus. In Egypt the cat was domesticated 



1 Link, 'Die Urwelt und das Alterthum,' pp. 199-201, Berlin, 1821 ; Klemra, 

 * Culturgeschichte,' i. i, quoting Link ; Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire, 'Hist.* Nat. Geu.' 

 torn. ill. 96. 



2 * Lays of Ancient Rome,' p. 78, i860. 



