152 RECREATIONS OF A NATURALIST 



The Romans, on the other hand, were early 

 acquainted with the Cat as a mouse-killer. In the 

 Campana tomb, Cervitri, which represents in its 

 bas-reliefs and frescoes the atrium of the old 

 Lucumon's house, there is painted on the ground- 

 line an unmistakable Egyptian cat, with a mouse 

 in her mouth. The Rev. W. Houghton, who has 

 paid much attention to the natural history of the 

 ancients, is of opinion that the Tyrrhene trade 

 with Egypt must have introduced the sacred 

 animal into the house of the Roman noble. He 

 refers to a mosaic found at Pompeii, which 

 " pictures to the life a splendid Persian (?) tabby, 

 plotting against a duck hung up in the larder." 

 Here is evidence, he says, that the early people, 

 the Etruscans — to whatever race they belonged, or 

 whatever language they spoke — were acquainted 

 with the mouse-killing cat. Of course the 

 Pompeian cat might be separated from the 

 Etruscan one by hundreds of years ; nevertheless, 

 here we have evidence of the fact that the animal 

 was domesticated occasionally, at anyrate, by the 

 Romans at some time previous to the destruction 

 of Pompeii and Herculaneum by the eruption of 

 Mount Vesuvius in a.d. 79. Through the Romans, 

 probably, domestic cats were introduced into Gaul 

 and Britain, where such as made their escape, or were 

 lost, would return to a feral state in the woods, and, 

 pairing with the European Wild Cat, which was 

 formerly very common in England, would, in the 

 course of generations, lose its similarity to its 

 Egyptian ancestor, and gradually assume the 



