THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
wild cat ( Felis ocreata ) , which, like the serval, ranges through the whole 
of Africa, exclusive of the Sahara and the equatorial forests; the jungle cat 
( Felis chans), which is found in Egypt, Nubia and Abyssinia; the caracal 
(Felis caracal ), which is widely distributed throughout Africa; and 
Burchell’s cat (Felis nigripes). The last-named animal is the smallest of 
all the African felidae. The range of this pretty little spotted cat is entirely 
confined to the semi-desert regions of Western South Africa, and it cannot 
be a very common species, as but few skins find their way to the stores of 
traders living in the Bechuana villages along the eastern border of the 
Kalahari. Some thirty years ago I obtained a number of skins of Burchell’s 
cat from Bushmen in the Kalahari desert, and presented them to the 
Natural History Museum at South Kensington. Although Burchell’s cat 
is so small an animal, being no larger than a half-grown domestic cat, 
the Bushmen told me that it often attacks and kills goats by biting them 
in the throat and probably opening the jugular vein. 
Nearly allied to the true cats are the civet-cats, genets, meercats and 
mungooses, which are found all over Africa, but a detailed description of 
which is unnecessary in a work dealing with African animals primarily 
from a sportsman’s point of view. 
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