In regard to food, the wild cat preys chiefly upon rats, mice, and small birds, but it also kills larger animals, such as pheasants, hares, rabbits, and squirrels, while it occasionally ventures to attack the fawns of roe-deer and red deer, springing on their backs, and tearing open the arteries of the neck. There is an old monkish Latin line that “_catus amat pisces, sed non vult tingere plantas_” (the cat loves fish, but does not like to wet its feet); but this applies only to the domesticated breed, for when dwelling near streams or lakes the wild cat will capture both fishes and water-fowl. Like many other animals, it will often kill more than it can devour, as if from the very love of slaughter. The male and female live together only during the pairing-season, and while the kittens are unable to look after themselves. At other times each individual has its own particular haunt, from which, however, it makes long excursions into the surrounding forest or the neighbouring plains; such foraging expeditions often lasting for days together. In winter it frequently deserts the forest to take up its abode in old uninhabited buildings or other safe places of refuge. In some sheltered situation the female gives birth in spring to five or six kittens, very similar to those of domesticated cats, and likewise born blind. When captured, wild cats, whether old or young, are impossible to tame; and it is for this reason that the species is so seldom seen in menageries. As already mentioned, it has been suggested that many of the cats found wild in Scotland are hybrids between the wild species and the tame breed, but there is no evidence that such interbreeding takes place; and such of these animals as are not true wild cats seem to be individuals of the domesticated breed which have reverted to the wild state, and have thereby assumed to some extent the characters of the ancestral type. THE RED KANGAROO (_Macropus rufus_) Little wonder that when Captain Cook and his companions first beheld kangaroos bounding over the plains of Australia they were overwhelmed with astonishment, and regarded them as the most extraordinary animals in the world. They are, indeed, unlike any other creatures, and form the supreme development of the terrestrial and herbivorous section of the marsupial type, being admirably adapted to their environment, and occupying in Australia the place held in other countries by cattle, sheep, antelopes, deer, and hares. For there are kangaroos of all sizes, ranging from the gigantic species, with its 6 foot stature, forming the subject of the present notice, down to the diminutive kangaroo-rats, no larger than rabbits.