THE ZooLocist—May, 1875. 4453 
Wild Cats.— Being anxious that this subject—reintroduced by Mr. Corbin 
in the ‘ Zoologist’ (S. 8. 4376)—should be thoroughly sifted, I beg to offer 
the following remarks, in the hope of eliciting the opinions of others who 
may know more about the matter than myself:—First, as to the length of 
the tail of wild cats, which is a point made so much of, I have seen thirteen 
living British examples of what I believe to be the perfectly genuine 
indigenous wild breed, besides three or four times that number of stuffed 
specimens, and some skins, and in all of these the tail, although not quite 
as long in proportion as that of an average tame cat, is not quite short 
like that of a specimen in the Oxford Museum, shot in the Forest of 
Ardennes, or of a skin in the possession of a friend of mine, who does not 
know where it came from. The examples which I have seen (both living 
and dead) have all been of the same colouring,—perfectly correct, according 
to the descriptions in the best books on the subject (such as Bell),—except 
that in some examples, but not in all, there has been a small patch of white 
on the throat. All the tails are about the same size at the tip as at the root, 
and do not taper as in the ordinary tame animal; and, as implied before, are 
correctly ringed, and end in the orthodox black tag. Prof. Rolleston, of Oxford, 
says that a genuine wild cat has always a short tail (as the Belgian specimen 
referred to above), but if all these are only the descendants of tame animals 
gone wild, or of mixed parentage, is it not extraordinary that they should all 
be of the correct colouring ? and if of the latter parentage, how is it that their 
tails are always (as far as my observation goes) of a uniform length, as they 
cannot all, from widely-separated parts of the country (but yet very locally 
and thinly distributed), have the same pedigree or equal proportion of wild 
and tame blood in them? Professor Owen, in his ‘ History of British 
Fossil Mammals and Birds,’ under the section ‘“ Wild Cat” (p. 173), has 
the following :—“ The tail of the domestic cat is more tapering, and a little 
longer, than in the wild cat.” (The italics are mine.) And even supposing 
all continental wild cats’ tails to be short, like the Ardennes specimen, why 
should we not have, peculiar to this country, a longer-tailed variety, which, 
would not be nearly so extraordinary as is the fact of our having a peculiar 
species of wagtail (Motacilla Yarrellii), which, although endowed with the 
average powers of flight, is scarcely known on the Continent, while its con- 
tinental representative (M. alba) is as little known here? Of the length 
and size of their legs, as compared with the tame animal, I will say nothing, 
as it is, I think, reasonable to suppose that cats in a state of nature might, 
in the course of several generations, increase in the strength of their limbs, 
and this superior size would take several generations before it again dis- 
appeared, and it is not therefore surprising that it is constant in specimens 
born in captivity. But there is one point in connection with their being 
born in captivity, which I think goes a long way to prove that they are 
really wild,—which is, that where they have been induced to reproduce in 
SECOND SERIES—VOL. X. 2B 
