Chap. I. DOMESTIC CATS : THEIR PARENTAGE. 43 



the increased fleetness of our hunters — it rapidly spread through- 

 out the country, and is now everywhere nearly uniform. But 

 the process of improvement is still going on, for every one tries 

 to improve his strain by occasionally procuring dogs from the 

 best kennels. Through this process of gradual substitution the 

 old English hound has been lost ; and so it has been with the 

 old Irish greyhound and apparently with the old English bull- 

 dog. But the extinction of former breeds is apparently aided 

 by another cause; for whenever a breed is kept in scanty 

 numbers, as at present with the bloodhound, it is reared with 

 difficulty, and this apparently is due to the evil effects of long- 

 continued close interbreeding. As several breeds of the dog 

 have been slightly but sensibly modified within so short a period 

 as the last one or two centuries, by the selection of the best indi- 

 vidual dogs, modified in many cases by crosses with other breeds ; 

 and as we shall hereafter see that the breeding of dogs was 

 attended to in ancient times, as it still is by savages, we may 

 conclude that we have in selection, even if only occasionally 

 practised, a potent means of modification. 



Domestic Cats. 



Cats have been domesticated in the East from an ancient 

 period ; Mr. Blyth informs me that they are mentioned in a 

 Sanskrit writing 2000 years old, and in Egypt their antiquity is 

 known to be even greater, as shown by monumental drawings 

 and their mummied bodies. These mummies, according to De 

 Blainville, 84 who has particularly studied the subject, belong to 

 no less than three species, namely, F. caligulata, hubastes, and 

 chaus. The two former species are said to be still found, both 

 wild and domesticated, in parts of Egypt. F. caligulata presents 

 a difference in the first inferior milk molar tooth, as compared 

 with the domestic cats of Europe, which makes De Blainville 

 conclude that it is not one of the parent-forms of our cats. 

 Several_ naturalists, as Pallas, Temminck, Blyth, believe that 

 domestic cats are the descendants of several species com- 



PP. 85, 89, 90, 175, on the 2^ ^amculata being mnmnued. 



