Savage as a wild cat is a proverbial expression; and although in attitudes of repose, like the one selected for the coloured Plate, the ferocity of look may temporarily disappear, there are few animals fiercer or more bloodthirsty than _Felis catus_. Indeed, a wild cat brought to bay or caught in a trap is a perfect fiend incarnate. The wild cat and the lynx are the only feline Carnivora indigenous at the present day to central and northern Europe; and of these two the lynx has long since disappeared from the British Isles, and has become very scarce throughout the greater part of the Continent, but is still common in Scandinavia and Russia. The wild cat, on the other hand, survives in most European countries, and is far from uncommon in the Alps and many parts of France and Germany, although in Great Britain its sole remaining refuges are among the highlands of Scotland, and even there it has been suggested that many of the so-called wild cats are hybrids, or domesticated cats run wild. Eastward, the range of the wild cat extends at least as far as the Altai, where its representative has a larger and more woolly coat than the typical western race. In Africa the place of the European wild cat is taken by a closely allied but somewhat less strongly striped species known as _Felis ocreata_, of which the northern race was protected and held sacred by the ancient Egyptians in Bubastis and other cities. That the European and the African wild cats have given rise to the domesticated cats of the greater part of the Old World may be considered certain, although there is some difference of opinion as to the respective shares taken by the two wild species in the production of the tame breeds. Among the ordinary house-cats of western Europe, the type coming nearest to the wild ancestor is the one with black transverse stripes on a grey ground. The true tabby, on the other hand, that is to say the type in which the dark markings take the form of broad longitudinal or obliquely longitudinal bands arrayed in a ring-like or spiral manner on the flanks, is unlike either of the two wild cats, and it has been suggested that it may have had a totally distinct ancestry. By choice the wild cat, which for most of the year lives alone, frequents large, thick, and sequestered pine-forests, where it selects rocky situations as affording the best hiding-places. In addition to clefts in the rocks, it chooses, however, for its lair the burrows of the fox or the badger, or holes in large tree-trunks, while it will sometimes make its abode in thick bushes. [Illustration]