, Animal Traits. — | Wg 
_ of danger? Whence did she obtain the professional skill of an 
expert in disabling an armor-clad alligator the first time she 
tried ? ; 
Where was it decided that a wild cat should gaze complacently 
into the serried crater of a marsupial prepared for battle, and then 
fly in terror from a harmless touch of Homo sapiens ? 
_ ’Twas instinct did it! Well, “instinct is a great matter,” and 
would serve for the age of William Paley, who knew nothing 
about the conservation of forces, but science has, added a new 
world to our possessions since then. 
Think of it a moment. The ethereal undulations flowing from 
the surface of the snake, opossum and raccoon which enter the — 
eyes of the cat and disturb its optic nerves, assisted, it is reason- 
able to suppose, by odors emanating from their bodies disturbing __ 
its olfactories, cause mild muscular action or none at all, while 22 
the slightly different modes of motion from a wild cat’s body set y 
up activities so intense as to suspend the action of other faculties 
and concentrate the whole force of the animal in changing the 
space relations between itself and its enemy. So violent is the | 
disturbance that the sensation of hunger is suspended and several 
days are passed without food. Friends are no longer recognized. _ 
Everything manifesting motion is held a foe. A position as far 
away from the dreadful apparition as it was possible to find was 
held for three days, in a constrained attitude against the roof at — 
the gable, with eyes phosphorescent at night and much dilated, — 
and the unnatural tension was not for a moment relaxed at any 
time that she was observed. . Se 
We are driven to the conclusion that long ages had passed- 
during which the ancestry respectively of the wild cat and the 
_ domestic cat were enemies, and that when collision occurred the 
_ domestic line went to the wall. During this time the present 
Markings of the wild cat and its odor were acquired, pointing 
_“nmistakably to a long period of separation into species as di: 
“nct as we now find them to be. For it is very certain that puss 
never before saw a wild cat, nor is it very likely that her parents ever 
€y are extremely rare in Florida, and nothing but lon 
frequent contact could arrange so vast a force about an equi 
num so delicate as to be overthrown by a mere arrangement 
of very ordinary reflections of light and trifling molecular dis- 
po Of an odoriferous character. 2 op n : 
Sele oe 
