942 General Notes. [September 
moths, chiefly Noctuidz, in his garden. About 1870 I had a cat 
that, nearly every hot afternoon in summer and autumn, caught 
grasshoppers (Caloptenus and Oedipoda), and brought me her 
insect captures alive before eating them, with as much pride as if 
she had taken mice or birds. During the past summer I noticed 
several cats capture and eat beetles of the genera Lachnosterna 
and Prionus; the odor of the beetles of the latter genus seems 
sufficiently pungent and repulsive to drive away cats, since they 
dislike most pungent odors, but I have seen two cats that appar- 
ently regarded Prionus a delicacy, for they would eat dead, mu- 
tilated, sometimes half-decayed beetles of this genus, which they 
found about the yard. 
Tempted by the butter or other kinds of fat upon mashed po- 
tatoes, or by the meat mixed with the potatoes in certain sorts of 
hash, the domestic cat has learned to eat potatoes, but most cats 
dislike them; cats have been in similar ways forced into accept- 
ing bread, but it still remains true that the majority of well-fed 
cats will reject bread unless buttered or soaked in milk. Still th 
cat likes a few peculiar flavors; their extreme passion for catnip 
(Nepeta cataria), and their fondness for valerian (Valeriana), have 
been long since observed and noted. Kleberg says’ that the a 
likes golden bread, 7. e., a bread flavored with saffron and spices; 
that it likes ginger-bread, rose-water rolls, and raisins. I have 
seen several cats that ate raisins, and one cat that won a 
raisins, peanut-candy, lumps of sugar, figs, and nearly all ree 
of nuts, but this cat was an especial pet and tasted of alm 
everything which its mistress ate, eating some of her food when 
the flavor did not prove too disagreeable. 3 
Last summer I was greatly surprised, however, knowing er 
pathy which cats generally have to amylaceous food, 
he idea naturally suggested itself at first that the butter on the 
corn led him to eat it, but he eats it greedily without butter, 
often dinner of from- one-half to a whole a 
of corn, while meat remained on his plate untouched. Raw em 
1S not very acceptable to him, although sometimes eaten; = w 
farmers should be thankful, since if the feline appetite ni an 
corn was as good as it is for cooked corn the cats might aise 
cornfields, eat the corn from the ears, and thus become 4 sen 
foe to agriculture. 
The belief that corn-eating was an individual peculiarity pei 
cat was soon dispelled by experiments with a number pir er 
cats, all of which ate green corn with equal readiness. Furth 
n 
Zool. garten, July, 1878, jahrg. 19, pp. 211-213. 
