and Cairo were so abundantly provided from 1876 to 1888. The important cat illustrated here, and who lives now in one of the glass cases in the “Salle divine” of the Louvre, is a perfect type of the species, long, slender in the back, broad in the hind-quarters, with a delicate, well-set head, rings in the ears, a necklace round the neck, and a little scarab on the top of the head; the artist who modelled it has rendered excellently and truthfully the supple bearing and the bold physiognomy of his original. [Illustration: BRONZE CAT. The Louvre.] The cats represented on the monuments, or the mummies of which are found in Egypt, were not of the same race as our domestic cat. Scholars have studied them and are unanimous--Virchow, too, recently--in recognizing them as the _Felis maniculata_ and the _Felis chaus_. Egypt had tamed a few individual ones, but had not domesticated the whole species. They are sometimes to be seen on the bas-reliefs solemnly seated near their masters. It is commonly asserted that they were used for hunting birds in the marshes, and Wilkinson quotes in support a fairly large number of mural paintings where they stalk through the reeds, routing out little birds. I confess that this interpretation does not seem to me to be correct. Where others claim to recognize animals ready for the chase and acting on behalf of man, I only see animals, tame or not, on marauding bent and scouring the bushes for their own purposes; just as our domesticated cat chases the sparrows in our gardens and destroys the nests in our parks without any advantage to his master. Egyptian artists, very acute observers of what was going on around them, reproduced their cats’ expeditions, as they noted other picturesque details of the life of nature. If we examined the 180,000 cats--neither more nor less--we should probably come upon a fairly large proportion of ichneumons. In Egypt the ichneumon and the cat were always associated; wherever there are mummies of cats it may be safely assumed that mummies of ichneumons are not far off. Cats or ichneumons, I hope the whole of them will not be used to manure the ground, but that some fine specimens may be chosen for the museums of antiquities and of natural history: in sparing a few hundreds, agriculture will not lose much, and science will gain considerably. The origin of our tom-cat has long been under discussion; some refer it to Egypt, others to Europe. It would be a pity not to profit by such an invasion of Egyptian cats, and to try to obtain a definite solution of the question. FOOTNOTES [1] From the _Journal des Savants_, 1908, pp. 1–17. [2] F.W. von Bissing, “Denkmäler Ægyptischer Skulptur.” Text, 4to; portfolio of plates, fol.; Bruckmann, Munich, 1906–8. [3] It may also be asked if the stele of the King-Serpent is an original or a restoration of the time of Setouî I. [4] Bissing, II. _Plate with the name of King Athotis_, note 6.