THE DEPARTURE OF CATS 29 



food is supplied by the Scotch pine ; though in hot 

 weather larch, silver fir, and spruce are added in liberal 

 quantities to the dietary. While he rejoices in hazel- 

 nuts, beech-mast, acorns, and spruce-seeds, he is 

 sometimes tempted by berries, walnuts, and apples. 

 He eats freely off buds and young shoots, and peels the 

 bark off trees digging a spiral course with his teeth 

 near the top of the tree, so that the first strong 

 gale blows over the tree-top. It is the sweet stuff be- 

 tween bark and tree, rather than the bark itself, that 

 attracts his fancy. In the spring he plays havoc with 

 the tender shoots of the horse-chestnut, showering 

 them on the ground ; while he is so fond of acorns 

 that he is accused even of pulling up young oak plants 

 to devour the remains of the acorns below. But we 

 doubt that one squirrel in ten inflicts serious injury on 

 anybody. 



We suppose that more cats disappear from the 

 domestic hearth in February than in any other month. 



The gamekeeper may or may not know 

 The more about this than he will admit it is 



of Cats certain that the cats go, and it is true that 



many of them turn up again. Whatever 

 the February fate of the cat, the nearest keeper to its 

 home bears the blame of having spirited it away. He 

 may deny all that he knows anything about the cat 

 or its colour or its fate but the more he denies the 

 more strongly will he be suspected, the more furiously 



