92 LLOYD'S NATURAL HISTORY. 



sources of the Dee northward to Tomintoul in Banffshire j and 

 lastly from Tomintoul to th3 city of Inverness. Northwards 

 and westwards of this line the animal still keeps a footing." 

 In Argyll at this date it had receded to the more mountainous 

 districts, where, however, it was not very uncommon. In the 

 Hebrides the Wild Cat is unknown. 



Although existing in North Wales till a comparatively late 

 period, it does not appear that the animal is now found within 

 the limits of the Principality. 



In spite of many assertions to the contrary, it may now, 

 owing to the careful investigations undertaken by Dr. 

 Hamilton, be taken as certain that the Wild Cat was never 

 an inhabitant of Ireland; all the records of its occurrence 

 there being based on specimens of the Common Cat ■v^hich 

 had reverted to a wild state, the latest of such supposed 

 instances of the occurrence there of the true Wild Cat having 

 been published in 1885. The first writer to dispute the 

 existence of the Wild Cat in Ireland was the late William 

 Thompson, of Belfast, who, in his " Natural History of 

 Ireland," published in 1856, wrote that the creature in question 

 " cannot be given with certainty as a native animal." Never- 

 theless, in the second edition of Bell's " British Quadrupeds," 

 which appeared in 1874, the statement from the first edition 

 that the Wild Cat exists in " some parts of Ireland " was 

 allowed to reappear without note or comment ; and it was not 

 till the appearance of Dr. Hamilton's paper in the " Proceedings" 

 of the Zoological Society for 1885 that the Wild Cat can be 

 said to have been authoritatively removed from the list of Irish 

 Mammals. 



Habits. — Like the rest of its family, truculent and savage in 

 its disposition, and endowed with, in proportion to its size, 

 singular strength and activity of body, the Wild Cat is now the 

 only really formidable wild animal to be met with in the 



