4868 THE ZooLocist—APRIL, 1876. 
The weight and chest-measurement must, of course, only be taken for what 
they are worth, the cat being (I need hardly say) in poor condition. The 
greatest proportionate discrepancies between these measurements and those 
given by Captain Hadfield (S. S. 4793) seem to be! in—the breadth of the 
head, which I think the difference of sex sufficiently accounts for; the 
length of the mystachial bristles, from the same cause, and also perhaps 
age; and the width of the ears. Captain Hadfield makes a trifling error 
(no doubt from taking his description from a stuffed specimen), in calling a 
wild cat’s nose black. In all the individuals I have seen alive the nose has 
been flesh-coloured ; and this is the case with, I think, every species of the 
Felide represented in the Zoological Gardens, except the lions and the 
black variety of leopard. While looking at the cats’ noses in the “ Zoo” 
the other day I noticed that the only two species of the family whose noses 
differ in shape from the regulation flat type are the lions—who have round 
noses—and the exceptionally pretty little animal, the eyra, who has a 
prominent button-like nose. I compared this young female wild cat’s skull 
with those of some tame cats, and found that it exceeded in length that of 
a fine adult domestic tom by about one-sixteenth of an inch. Being no 
anatomist, I will only mention three points which especially struck me: the 
brain-cavity of the wild cat is somewhat larger than that of its domestic 
relative; the under jaw is much more massive; and, when set up on end, 
the lower jaw of the wild cat stands almost true on coronoid process, condyle, 
and the angle, leaning over towards the upper side. In the tame cats 
these bones balance on angle and condyle, the coronoid process not touching 
the ground, and they incline over towards the lower side. My old pair of 
wild cats bred last year, three kittens being born on the 13th of June; two 
(females) were either born dead or died almost immediately; the third (a 
male) died in the night of August 31st, from distemper. His mother’s milk 
failed, and we were obliged to put him under a tame cat as wet nurse. The 
gestation was nearly sixty-eight days, or twelve days longer than the ordinary 
gestation of a tame cat. My old tom cat weighs eleven pounds and three- 
quarters.—A. H. Cocks; 42, Great Cumberland Place, Hyde Park, W., 
March 14, 1876. 
Correction of an Error.—As I cannot boast of having kept my tame 
buzzard for upwards of twenty-three years, may I correct the “1853” in 
the fourth line of my letter (S. S. 4829), which is a misprint for 1873.— 
2. Rpg By 68 
Wild Cats.—I have read with interest the notes on the wild cat which 
have recently been published in the ‘ Zoologist.’ Gamekeepers and others 
have often told me that the domestic cat (Helis domesticus) will, if allowed 
to run wild, breed with the wild cat (Felis Catus); but I have never been 
able to get an authentic specimen of the cross, and do not know any 
person who has seen one. Perhaps some of the readers of the ‘ Zoologist’ 
