THE PREHISTORIC CAT. 581 
TEE PRE Sd © Ral € (CAT: 
The editor of the /dustrialist, published at the Agricultural College of Kan- 
sas, gravely makes the following ‘‘forecast’’: ‘‘ The December number of the 
American Naturalist, it is announced, will contain an article, ‘ copiously ilus- 
trated,’ on the ‘Extinct Cats of America.’ We shall await the appearance of 
this number of the Va/uralist with intense interest, feeling confident that this 
‘leading article’ will lead to the solution of one of the great problems of science. 
Reasoning @ griori—that surest road to truth in natural science—it must be plain 
to the dullest intellect that, where the ‘ extinct cat’ is found, there will also be 
numerous billets of wood and boot-jacks, and possibly an occasional soap dish ; 
and that all will be found in the neighborhood of a ‘back fence,’ we cannot for 
an instant doubt. Again, that a fossil bedroom window will be found near this 
back fence, opening upon it, we as surely believe as that the ‘ extinct cat’ was 
ever a live one. Fortunately, science disdains not the meanest object of study, 
and to it we commend this bedroom window, leaving it wide open, so to speak, 
and feeling confident that near it will be found the prehistoric man, if not the ‘ miss- 
ing link’ itself.’’ 
The one unfortunate thing in house decorations nowadays, in the opinion of 
Mr. R. W. Edis, is the everlasting seeking after some novelty in papers, curtains, 
or other hangings. Everybody wants to have a room different from her neigh- 
bor. Decoration is being done as a fashion, not from any real love of it. Of 
course, we should not like to see room after room repeating itself in decoration, 
but why a few really good papers should not be the ground-work of true artistic 
decoration—when the narrowness of worldly circumstances prevents the more 
elaborate and more expensive hand decoration in paint or distemper—and let the 
rest follow from the design, there is no good reason. If that suggestion should 
be adopted, there might be hope for real art decoration instead of the cold formal- 
ity and everlasting interchange of two or three colors. As a critical writer on 
art decoration has said: ‘‘If the papers on our walls and the curtains we hang 
in Our rooms were, even at second hand, but the record of the fresh impressions 
and the graceful fancies of artists of our own day instead of being incumbered 
with mechanical pattern work struggling to be artistic, it would be better than all 
the present miserable striving after novelty.” Not to have what your neighbor 
possesses is the bane of decorative art. 
——— " 
Celluloid Veneer is gaining favor as anornament for furniture. As an imita- 
tion marble or malachite top for tables it shows most admirable fitness, and for 
panels in imitation of tortoise shell, etc., it is a handsome addition for chamber 
sets. 
