1 64 RECREATIONS OF A NATURALIST 



wild species, but were imported from abroad, very 

 likely by the Romans. This view seems- 

 strengthened by the fact that the early Britons set 

 great store by their cats ; fixed their value by law, 

 according to their age ; and imposed penalties for 

 destroying them. This they probably would not 

 have done if they were common, or could be easily 

 procured by rearing wild kittens and taming them. 

 According to the Welsh laws of Howel Dha, who 

 died in 948, after a reign of thirty-three years over 

 South Wales and eight years over the whole 

 Principality, the value of a kitten before it could 

 see was fixed at a penny ; after it had caught a 

 mouse, twopence ; and when it had become an 

 expert mouser, fourpence, which in those days, it 

 must be remembered, was a large sum. If anyone 

 killed a cat belonging to the king's household, the 

 animal was suspended by its tail in the granary 

 so that its nose just touched the floor, and the 

 delinquent had to forfeit, by way of fine, as mucb 

 corn as, when heaped up on the floor, would 

 exactly hide the cat from view.^ 



In England in former days the Wild Cat was 

 included amongst the beasts of chase, and is often 

 mentioned in royal grants giving liberty to inclose 

 forest land and license to hunt there. Extracts from 

 several such grants will be found in The Zoologist 

 for 1878, p. 251, and 1880, p. 251. Nor was it 

 for diversion alone that the Wild Cat was hunted.- 

 Its fur was much used as trimming for dresses, and 

 in this way was worn even by nuns at one time. 

 Thus in Archbishop Corboyle's " Canons," anno 



