WILD-CATS AT THE ZOO.
THE reservation of one-tenth of the area of Scotland for deer-forests has probably arrested the extermination of three, if not of four, of the largest and rarest of our birds and beasts of prey for at least a century. The great increase in the numbers of the golden eagle, and the migration of the ospreys from the lakes to the forests, has already been noticed in the Spectator. It was reasonable to expect that the wild-cat would also benefit by the policy, now generally in favour with great proprietors, of encouraging animals of prey to keep down the grouse and hares. The arrival at the Zoological Gardens of two genuine Scotch wild-cats, trapped (luring the last month on the same estate in Inverness-shire, is evidence that even there the rarest and wildest of all British quadrupeds are recovering from the persecution of half-a-century of grouse and black-cock preserving. Both were caught in steel traps, and each has lost part of a fore- foot ; but with the wonderful vitality of all cats, they are now so far recovered from their injuries that, on being confronted with each other, the* at once joined battle, like the Border rider at Chevy Chase who—
When his legs were smitten off, Did fight upon his stumps?'
These bold and courageous beasts, fresh from the remnants of the Caledonian Forest, have not diminished either in size or courage since the wild-cat was described by John Bossewell in 1597 :—" He is slye and wittie, and seeth so sharply that he overcommeth the darkness of night by the shyninge light of his eyen. In shape of body he is like unto a leopard "— [this is not the case, however]—" and hathe a great mouth. He doth delight that he enjoyeth his liberty ; and in his youth he is swift, plyante, and merye. He maketh a rueful noise and a gasteful when he profereth to fight with another." The growling of the wild-cats is " gasteful " indeed, not only when they proffer to fight with another, but whenever a friendly visitor proffers to look at them. That owned by Lord Lilford, which has been in the Zoological Gardens for some time, when exhibited at the cat show at the Westminster Aquarium, performed the singular and creditable feat in wild-cat annals of growling without ceasing for two whole days, varied only by explosions of hisses and spitting. This cat is somewhat lighter, and has fewer dark markings than the Scotch wild- .cats; the ground hue of the far is pepper-colour, its eyes pale. green, its nose very small—not a usual feature in wild-cats—and covered with fur, its face round and bushy, and its expression infinitely surly. The only stripes distinctly marked are two on either side of the head. Though the list of so-called wild- cats includes nearly twenty species, there is only one, besides the animal we have described, which seems to compete with it as the possible undescended great original of the "bundle of concepts" which civilised man has in his mind when, with reference to all the varieties of the domestic animal, he uses the abstract term "cat." This is the " chaus," or jangle-cat, which bears somewhat the same geographical and tribal relation to a Scotch or Russian wild-cat as a Pathan tribes- man to a Highlander. The Scotch wild-cat is found with very little variation throughout Northern and Central Earope, across the steppes of Northern Asia, as far as the southern limits of the Nepaul Hills. At a height of some 8,000 ft., his place is taken by another cat, equally bold, and far less retiring and solitary, the " chaus," which is common not only in India, but at the roots of the Caucasus, and throughout Northern Africa and Upper Egypt. A splendid specimen of this Oriental cousin of our wild-cats occupies a cage in the same house at the Zoo, under the somewhat misleading name of the "Egyptian cat." Nothing could well be -more different from the paintings of the sleek
tabbies of ancient Egypt, the sacred animals of the god- dess Bast, petted by priests, and taught to catch wild- fowl for their masters in the reedy banks of the Nile, than this rough, round, broad-headed, busby-whiskered n upstand- ing " savage, who has held his own till the present day in the swamps of Asia and Africa, and in the immediate neighbour- hood of every Indian country village or tank, just as the European wild-cat did in England till the days of the Tudors. The late General Douglas Hamilton, in his journals of sport in Southern India, tells a story of the courage of this Indian wild-cat, which matches exactly the experience of Charles St. John in Sutherlandshire. St. John's terriers had brought a wild-cat to bay under a rock, and when he approached, the animal sprang straight at hie face, and was only stopped by a blow from a stick which be had cut before coming up to aid the dogs. General Hamilton says of the Onus : "One of these animals came into our cantonment evidently on the prowl for fowls, or anything it could pick up ; so we collected all the dogs we could, and had a hunt. We came to a long check, the dogs being quite at fault. After looking for some time, I spied the cat squatting in a hedge, and called for the dogs. When they came I knelt down and began clapping my hands and cheering them on ; the cat suddenly made a clean spring at my face ; I had just time to catch it as one would a cricket-
ball, and giving its ribs a strong squeeze, I threw it to the dogs, not, however, before it bad made its teeth meet in my arm, just above my wrist. For some weeks I had to carry my arm in a sling, and I shall carry the marks of the bite to
my grave." The chaos is a far finer animal even than the European wild-cat. It is larger and more powerful, though its proportions and movements are almost the same. In colour it is a fine tawny-grey, with long bushy hair, a ruff round its face, yellow cheeks shading into white, a long, very broad nose, long ears slightly tufted, yellow eyes, and bars on its tail. There are also two dark bars on the inside of the arm, above the elbow; when laying its ears back, spitting and uttering growls like distant thunder, it is the "very moral of a big, ill-tempered domestic tom-cat, which poaches all day, fights all night, and sleeps by choice in the coal cellar. Apart from their general resemblance to the tame cat, both the chaos and the Scotch cat in their moments of repose exactly resemble the domestic species. They never " pace " their cages,---a habit which distinguishes all leopards and tigers, and all the tiger-cats when young. They sleep all day, if possible, either curled up on their backs with their noses upwards, like a tame cat in a sunny window ; or with their backs drawn up and their fore-paws tucked neatly under their chests. When feeding, they do not lie down like the leopards, but crouch over their food, with their jaws almost upon the ground, and their backs somewhat arched, like a tame cat with a mouse. Anatomists state that the European wild-cat differs from the tame animal in the dimensions of that part of its interior which is in such request for violin-strings. If this objection is fatal to the claim of the former to be the ancestor of our cats, we should be inclined to find its direct ancestor in the chaus,—a view which need not be coupled with the conclusions of M. Champfleury, who considers that the Egyptian cat was acclimatised in Egypt at the same time as the horse, in 1668 B.C.
All the other " wild-cats " are either tiger-cats, leopard- cats, or puma-cats. It is to be regretted that the collection at the Zoological Gardens of theee beautiful creatures is less complete than that of any other tribe exhibited. Even the "clouded tiger," the most perfect of all the spotted kinds, which was discovered and brought to England by Sir Stamford Reifies, the moving spirit in the foundation of the Zoological Society, has disappeared from the collection. Bat the Society still possess a good specimen of the finest of the " self- coloured " puma-cats,—the golden cat of Sumatra. In colouring it is unique, and its proportions are as elegant as its tints. The far on the back is the colour of the red variety of gold-stone, with the texture of thick-piled velvet. This warm and luminous hue pales into white on the belly, and runs up the chest, ending on the chin, which is square and almost bearded, giving a, tigerish expression to the head. On the mask of the face the reddy golden far is striped with wavy lines of orange and white. The eyes are strangely large, dark, clonde, beryl-brown globes, with smoky-yellow topaz lights, and shine like round translucent gems set in a velvet case. This mass of orange-tawny, gold, and topaz, is set off by the pale
rose-pink of the nose and lips, and the not unfrequent exhibition of rows of ivory teeth. The whole body is elegant and symmetrical, and the colouring so exactly balanced, that the warm white of the lower parts which ends in front at the point of the chin, extends with the sane precision along the lower part of the tail even to the tip, as if the golden cat were fresh from a swim across a lake of cream. The ocelots, with their shell-shaped markings of black on coats of grey, and the Bengal tiger-cat, are scarcely less beautiful examples of the spotted varieties of the smaller felidx. The former have been known to breed in the Gardens; and there is little doubt that if a suitable house were provided for them, litters of ocelot and tiger-cat kittens would be among the most popular exhi- bitions of the Zoo.
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