NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 229 



domestic Cat is not descended from any one wild species, but 

 from several in different countries, and at different periods of the 

 world's history. 



Commencing with an account of the first Cat Show, and a 

 chapter on the habits generally of the feline race, Mr. Weir 

 discusses seriatim the various breeds of the domestic Cat, with 

 characteristic figures of each drawn by himself. 



The most curious of these are, the so-called Archangel Blue 

 Cat, in Mr. Weir's opinion not a distinct breed, but a light 

 coloured form of the black Cat, with the fur of a bluish lilac tint, 

 with no sootiness or black about it, the nose and paws dark, and 

 the eyes orange-yellow ; the Siamese Cat, white, with the ears and 

 lower part of face black ; another variety, having the body of a 

 dun colour, nose, part of the face, ears, feet, and tail, of a very 

 dark chocolate-brown, nearly black; eyes of a beautiful blue by 

 day, and of a red colour by night ! and the Manx Cat, whose 

 chief characteristic is that it is tail-less. It is popularly believed 

 that all Cats in the Isle of Man are tail-less, but this, it appears, 

 is not so. Mr. Weir says that there, as elsewhere, tails of all 

 lengths may be seen "from nothing up to ten inches." Twenty- 

 four pages are occupied with an enumeration of the points by 

 which Cats are judged, and by breeders and exhibitors this por- 

 tion of the book will probably be regarded as the most useful. 

 This is succeeded by half-a-dozen pages on the diseases of Cats, 

 and their remedies, and the volume concludes with a collection of 

 scraps relating to Cats, from various sources, some of which we 

 should have thought too trivial to be worth notice. " Cat 

 Proverbs," the " Cat of Shakespeare," " Superstition and Witch- 

 craft," " Weather Notions," and " Inn Signs," are some of the 

 titles to the chapters. 



Mr. Harrison Weir has certainly displayed much industry in 

 collecting every scrap of information he could find relating to the 

 domestic Cat, and whether the reader be an intending exhibitor, 

 anxious to know the points of a particular breed which he 

 possesses, or merely the contented owner of an ordinary mouser, 

 he will find in this little volume something to interest and amuse 

 him. Let him by no means omit to read (p. 18) the story of the 

 Deaf Cat, a capital story which has the additional merit of being 

 true. 



