1872.] 1 6 1 [Shaler. 
blackish color; generally these bands are so divided that the creature 
has a somewhat spotted appearance. The legs are banded with sev- 
eral stripes of black, those near the upper part being the most per- 
fect. The tail is similarly banded, the stripes being really branches 
from the central black line, but not meeting on the central side of 
the tail, which like the belly itself is of a whitish hue. The beautiful 
figure of Felis catus in the atlas of Straus Durkheim’s great memoir 
on the anatomy of the cat is, in every feature of coloration, pre- 
cisely like a household cat now in my possession. Excepting the tail, 
which is a little longer than that of the specimen figured in a plate, 
the likeness is absolutely perfect. 
I can throw no light upon the reversion to these markings. So far 
as I have been able to learn, the breed is on the whole local, though 
information on this point is incomplete. There seems to be some 
connection between coloration and size; all the specimens of males 
marked with this pattern which I have seen are distinctly larger 
than the average specimens of other colors. The tails appear also to 
be a little shorter and bushier in this reverted form, imitating more 
closely the general characters of the wild species than do the other 
forms. 
T am inclined to think also that the females prefer males of this 
pattern ; one specimen, colored and also brindled, now domesticated 
in my house, has kittens uniformly like her in point of color. It is 
, not impossible that this coloration may prove of some small service to 
semi-feral cats in catching birds; these striped colors are singularly 
inconspicuous. ‘The number of birds taken by these creatures has 
never been appreciated ; there can be no doubt that during the fledg- 
line season several hundred a day are destroyed in this fashion within 
the half a dozen square miles of Cambridge. Itis not improbable that 
spread of canker worm and other insect pests is in a great measure 
due to the loss of: insectivorous birds through the action of 
these pests. This is a point of sufficient importance to warrant the 
giving of a bounty for the scalps of these creatures that play the part 
of wolves against the defenceless flocks of the air. 
“It is not possible, however, to ascribe the reversion to this color- 
ation to action of natural selection operating by giving these crea- 
tures an advantage in the pursuit of prey; the action is not extensive 
enough. It is more reasonable to regard the color as correlated with 
a general physical condition which adapts the whole organization to 
ereat exposure in a rigorous climate. 
I should say that since I began to observe these features of colora- 
PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. — VOL. XV. 11 OCTOBER, 1872, 
