File:Brehm's Life of animals - a complete natural history for popular home instruction and for the use of schools (1895) (20418853131).jpg

Title: Brehm's Life of animals : a complete natural history for popular home instruction and for the use of schools
Identifier: brehmslifeofanim00breh (find matches)
Year: 1895 (1890s)
Authors: Brehm, Alfred Edmund, 1829-1884; PechuLoesche, Eduard, 1840-1913; Haacke, Wilhelm, 1855-1912; Schmidtlein, Richard
Subjects: Mammals; Animal behavior
Publisher: Chicago : Marquis
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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102 THE BEASTS OF PREY degenerated in the woods. The latter are frequently met with, but they never attain the size of the Wild Cats, though greatly exceeding that of the domestic Cat. They are as ferocious and dangerous as the Wild Cat, and after several generations have been born wild in the forest these animals come to resem- ble their progenitor, the Egyptian Cat, in color and tint, though they always lack the blunt tail, the light spot at the throat and the dark soles of their ances- tor. The animal known as Wild Cat in the United States is very different from the European animal of that name and is in reality a Lynx. (See Red Lynx.) THE EGYPTIAN CAT. The next member of this group is the Egyptian Cat (FcUs maniculatd). Ruppell discovered it in Nubia, on the western bank of the Nile, in a desert where rocky stretches of country alternated with bushy tracts. Later writers have found it in Sou- dan, in Abyssinia, in the innermost centre of Africa and in Palestine. The length of its body is about that the Egyptian Cat is more common in the Niam-Niam country than in any other part of Africa that has been fully explored, so that the cen- ter of the continent might be" considered the point from which it spread. The Niam-Niam do not pos- sess a domestic Cat, in the proper meaning of the word, but their boys capture the Egyptian Cat and wholly or partially tame it. At first they are tied in the vicinity of the huts, and soon become com- pletely at home in the house, where they make it their business to catch the Mice which infest these dwellings in great numbers. Venerated Ebers in " An Egyptian Princess," by the Ancient says : " The Cat was probably the Egyptians. most sacred of all the sacred ani- mals which the Egyptians regarded with veneration. Herodotus says that when one of their houses was on fire, the Egyptians first thought of saving the Cat and then of putting out the fire, and when a Cat died they cut off their own hair as a sign of mourn- ing. When a person wittingly or unwittingly caused
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THE EGYPTIAN CAT. puted by some naturalists the great weight of authority shows the Eg of the fur in the Egyptian Cat are shown in the picture, and no differet the wild life led by the former. (Felis maniculata.) twenty inches and its tail measures a little over ten inches. These are not the exact dimensions of our domestic Cat, but they approximate them closely. The arrangement of the colors of the fur is much iike that on some of our Cats. The mummies and pictures on Egyptian monuments agree most closely with this species, and evidently tend to prove that this was the domestic Cat of the Egyptians. Per- haps the priests imported it into Egypt from south- ern Nubia. It probably extended thence to Arabia and Syria, and later to Greece, Italy and the remain- der of Europe, and in more modern times, emigrat- ing Europeans spread it still farther. The observations of Schweinfurth in the Niam- Niam country are of great weight as evidence that the Egyptian Cat is the original stock from which the race of our domestic Cats descended. He savs ptian Cat to be the progenitor of our domestic feline. The markings es from the house-cat are observable that cannot be accounted for by the death of one of these animals, he forfeited his life. Diodorus himself saw a Roman citizen, who had killed a Cat, put to death by a mob, though the government, in its fear of Rome, tried its best to pacify the people. Dead Cats were artistically em- balmed, and of all mummified animals that are found, the Cat, carefully swathed in linen bandages, is the most common." THE DOMESTIC CAT. All researches point to the fact that the Cat was first tamed by the Egyptians, and not by the Hin- doos, or any northern people. The old Egyptian monuments speak clearly in pictures, signs and mummies, while the records of other nations do not even give us food for conjecture. The very fact that the mummies of both the domestic Cat and

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