wxxvi PLEISTOCENE MAMMALIA. 



importance. They show that the two kinds of cat (i.e. cat and ferret) were both in use as 

 domesticated animals, side by side, and at the same time in Italy, 900 years before the first 

 of the Crusaders reached Constantinople, and in the days of Gratian and Theodosius, not 

 those of Godfrey and Tancred. Erom the same authority, Ducange, I find that Evagrius 

 (col. 436) many years later — indeed, almost a couple of centuries after the date ordinarily 

 assigned to Palladius — still recognises a'iXovpog as the more correct denomination for 

 Felis domesticus, saying, as though the word kclttu were a somewhat trivial and over- 

 familiar designation, aiXovpov nv kuttov t) awriOtia Xtyu (lib. vi, 24). 1 



It is clear from this that the domestic cat was known in Rome and Constantinople in 

 the middle of the fourth century a.d., and that the yaXrj of Aristophanes and Aristotle, 

 which eats snakes, eggs, and honey, and follows mice into their holes, is a ferret, and not 

 the domestic cat. The latter animal, however, is represented in some of the Mosaics of 

 Pompeii, and its remains have been discovered along with those of the other domestic 

 animals, dogs and horses, destroyed by the showers of ashes which overwhelmed the city. 

 It was, therefore, known in Southern Italy in the first century before Christ. 



On the whole, it is surprising how little change has taken place in the domestic 

 fauna of Europe. Among the oxen the types of Bos longifrons and urus have been 

 clearly defined for an unknown length of time. The swine, since the beginning of the 

 Historic Period, have varied principally in the direction of fatness, and the horse does 

 not present any considerable difference. The dog, on the other hand, being the object 

 of human caprice, has varied to such a degree that it is almost impossible to recognise the 

 breeds of a hundred years ago in their lineal descendants. We must, therefore, seek for 

 the origin of these animals in the period which precede history in the various countries 

 of Europe, and we may infer, from the wideness of their distribution that they have 

 been in Europe for a considerable time before history began. 



Mange of the principal European Wild Mammalia. 



The following list of the principal European mammalia, showing their range in the 

 various countries, is based on the works of Desmarest, Eischer, Blasius, Buonaparte, and 

 Pallas, and the species which are now living in each country are distinguished from 

 those which formerly lived in the same area during the historic period. Some animals, 

 such as the cosmopolitan brown rat, and others, such as the smaller rodents and the bats, 

 have been purposely omitted. 



1 Rolleston, ' Journ. Anat. and Phys.,' 1868, pp. 51, 52. 



