JO Chapters on Animals. 



" A gentleman on a visit to a friend who lived on the skirts of an 

 extensive forest on the east of Germany lost his way. He wandered 

 for some hours among the trees, when he saw a light at a distance. 

 On approaching it, he was surprised to observe that it proceeded from 

 the interior of a ruined monastery. Before he knocked, he thought it 

 prudent to look through the window. He saw a multitude of cats 

 assembled round a small grave, four of whom were letting down a 

 coffin with a crown upon it. The gentleman, startled at this unusual 

 sight, and imagining that he had arrived among the retreats of fiends 

 or witches, mounted his horse and rode away with the utmost precipi- 

 tation. He arrived at his friend's house at a late hour, who had sat up 

 for him. On his arrival, his friend questioned as to the cause of the 

 traces of trouble visible on his face. He began to recount his adven- 

 ture after much difficulty, knowing that it was scarcely possible that his 

 friends should give faith to his relation. No sooner had he mentioned 

 the coffin with the crown upon it, than his friend's cat, who seemed 

 to have been lying asleep before the fire, leaped up, saying, ' Then I 

 am the King of the Cats!' and scrambled up the chimney and was 

 seen no more.'' 



Now, is not that a remarkable story, proving, at the 

 same time, the attention cats pay to human conversation 

 even when they outwardly seem perfectly indifferent to 

 it, and the monarchical character of their political organ- 

 ization, which without this incident might have remained 

 forever unknown to us ? This happened, we are told, in 

 eastern Germany ; but in our own island, less than a hun- 

 dred years ago, there remained at least one cat fit to be 

 the ministrant of a sorceress. When Sir Walter Scott 

 visited the Black Dwarf, " Bowed Davie Ritchie," the 

 Dwarf said, "Man Jiae ye ony poo'r?" meaning power of 

 a supernatural kind, and he added solemnly, pointing to a 

 large black cat whose fiery eyes shone in a dark corner 

 of the cottage, "He has poor!" In Scott's place any 

 imaginative person would have more than half believed 

 Davie, as indeed did his illustrious visitor. The ancient 



