XXVIII. 



ON THE DOMESTIC CATS, FELIS DOMESTICUS 

 AND MUSTELA FOINA, OF ANCIENT AND 

 MODERN TIMES. 



Having recently had occasion to study the habits and anatomy of 

 the English Marten Cats, Mustela martes and Mustela foina, and 

 having looked into the history of these animals and of certain other 

 carnivora which have borne the same name as they in ancient and 

 modern times, I have come to think that the latter of the two 

 creatures specified^ namely, the white-breasted marten, Mtistela 

 foina, was the animal which the ancient Greeks and Romans em- 

 ployed for the same domestic purposes for which we employ the 

 Felis domesticus ; whilst this latter animal has been employed as 

 at present in Western Europe for probably a considerably longer 

 period than the last thousand years. Other writers to whom I 

 have referred, and amongst them notably Bureau de la Malle, have 

 adopted the former of these conclusions; but upon premises more 

 or less inadequate or incorrect^ or both. I am well assured that 

 this question has for the philosophic naturalist much more than a 

 merely archaeological interest, for in the resolving of it we may 

 have light cast upon the working of the principle which Mr. Dar- 

 win has shown to be more potent than any other in regulating the 

 distribution of species, and which Van Beneden, with the well-known 

 physiological ^ aphorisms of Wolif and Treviranus before his eyes, 

 has formulated in the words ^, ' les etres qui composent une Faune 

 sont solidaires entre eux comma les organes d'un etre vivant.' It 

 is true that no such close interdependence as exists between man 



* Paget's 'Surgical Pathology,' p. 17, ed. Prof. Turner, 1863 ; Lewes, • Physiology 

 of Common Life,' i. p. 286; Wolffs 'Theoria Generationis,' p. 108, § 236. 

 " * Recherches sur la Faune Littorale de Belgique — Cdtacbs,' p. 4. 



