502 DOMESTIC CATS. 



and certain others of tlie domesticated animals, even to the extent 

 of the interchange of disease and death by the intermediation of 

 cysticerci and echinococci, has been shown to obtain between him 

 and any of the animals of which I shall here have to write ; but 

 readers of the * Origin of Species ' will recollect that more intricate, 

 if less mournful net-works, may bind up the presence in a par- 

 ticular country of a domestic animal with something so apparently 

 distant from the sphere of operation as the general colouration of 

 the landscape. Col. Newman ^ showed how the number of humble- 

 bees in a district depended on the presence of man, whose domestic 

 cats kept down the numbers of the honey-loving and devouring 

 field-mice ; and Mr. Darwin demonstrated in the way of experiment, 

 that the presence of the humble-bee was a pre-requisite for the 

 fertilisation of the heart's-ease and red clover. The dependence of 

 animal life upon the presence of particular forms of vegetable life is 

 familiar enough to us ; our own comfort depends too directly in 

 these over-peopled days and countries upon the adequate abun- 

 dance of our flocks and herds, and that adequate abundance again 

 depends too directly upon that of the turnip crops, unknown 

 to our forefathers, to suffer us to forget it ; but it is none the less 

 true that the peculiar character of the vegetation, and consequently 

 of the landscape of a country, depends very frequently upon the 

 peculiar characters of its animal inhabitants. The antelopes '^, by 

 carrying and dispersing the seeds of grapes, change the characters 

 of the African desert ; and the red glow of the clover field which 

 gratifies the eyes of the artisan depends ultimately on pollen-carry- 

 ing insects, and at second-hand from them upon the cats which 

 spend their daylight hours in the same murky atmosphere that he 

 does. It is possible that some such secret bond may exist between 

 the widely spread family of the Mustelidae^, and that of the 

 Abietineae, the geographical range of which so nearly coincides with 

 theirs. In this country the geographical distribution of the fir is 

 now all but exclusively dependent upon man's artificial aid ; where 

 it does take place independently of him, it takes place in great 

 measure by the aid of the squirrel which carries ofi" the cones or 

 seeds, and, having buried them, forgets, or is unable to dig them 



^ 'Origin of Species,' p. 84, 4th edit. 



^ Livingstone's 'Travels and Researches in South Africa,' 1857, p. 99. 



3 Wagner, 'Abhand. Akad. Wiss. Miinchen,' Bd. iv. pp. 26 and 107, 1846. 



