202 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
THE MAMMALS OF SHAKSPEARE. 
By Henry Reexs, F.L.S., F.Z.8. 
(Continued from p. 173.) 
Tue Witp Cart, Felis catus. 
Although once abundant in our woods and forests the Wild Cat 
is now nearly extinct, the few which still survive being confined to 
the mountainous parts of Scotland and North of England. This is 
as it should be: we can quite dispense with this rapacious feline 
in our well-kept and well-stocked woods in the South. A few 
weeks since a writer in ‘The Field’ mentioned that he had seen 
some old paintings or prints of “ Hunting the Wild Cat”; but 
I imagine that it was never considered “royal” sport, otherwise it 
would for a certainty have been attended to by Shakspeare, who 
was apparently well acquainted with the habits of the animal. In 
allusion to its preying by night and sleeping by day, he makes 
Shylock say— 
“ He sleeps by day 
More than the Wild Cat.” 
Merchant of Venice. Act ii., Scene 5. 
When roused to fury perhaps no animal of its size is com- 
parable to the Wild Cat for pluck and savageness. Mr. St. Jobn, 
in his ‘ Highland Sports, gives an interesting account of a fight 
with one of these savage brutes, which sprang straight at his face 
when six or seven yards distant, and had he not struck her in 
mid-air she would certainly have done him some serious injnry. 
Mr. St. John adds that “if a tame cat has nine lives a wild one 
must have a dozen”! 
In Taming of the Shrew, Act ii., Scene 1, Shakspeare makes 
Petruchio say— 
“Thou must be married to no man but me; 
For I am he am born to tame you, Kate; 
And bring you from a Wild Cat to a Kate 
Conformable, as other household Kates.” 
THe Lynx, Lyncus virgatus. 
The Pard, or Mountain Cat, is frequently mentioned by Shak- 
speare, but I know not to what animal the poet refers, unless it be 
