ORIGIN OF THE DOMESTIC CAT 165 



1 127, it is ordained "that no abbess or nun use 

 more costly apparel than such as is made of lambs' 

 or ta^y skins," and as no other part of the animal 

 but the skin was of any use here, it grew into a 

 proverb that " You can have nothing of a cat but 

 her skin." 



The Wild Cat is believed to be now extinct, not 

 only in England and Wales, but in a great part 

 of the south of Scotland. Some years ago a 

 Scottish naturalist resident in Stirlingshire (Mr 

 J. A. Harvie Brown) took a great deal of trouble, 

 by means of printed circulars addressed to the 

 principal landowners throughout Scotland and the 

 Isles, to ascertain the existing haunts of the Wild 

 Cat in that part of the United Kingdom. The result 

 of his inquiries, embodying some very interesting 

 information, was published in The Zoologist for 

 January 1881. The replies which he received 

 indicated pretty clearly, although perhaps unex- 

 pectedly, that there are now no wild cats in Scotland 

 south of a line drawn from Oban on the west coast 

 up the Brander Pass to Dalmally, and thence 

 following the borders of Perthshire to the junction 

 •ofthe three counties of Perth, Forfar, and Aberdeen, 

 northward to Tomintoul, and so to the city of 

 Inverness. We are assured that it is only to the 

 northward and westward of this line that the animal 

 still keeps a footing in suitable localities, finding its 

 principal shelter in the great deer forests. Thus we 

 see the Wild Cat is being gradually driven north- 

 ward before advancing civilisation and the increased 

 supervision of moors and forests. Just as the Rein- 



