the British Museum, a copy of which we here
present.
On such a subject we would give any judgment of our own with much deterence but it has long been our opinion that many animals were created in the condition which we call domestication, and were originally given by God to man, as his humble companions and assistants. If this was so, the absence of wild types of nearly all our domestic animals, is perfectly accountable, for they had no existence; and though in some cases, as in the Wild Ass, there are numerous wild individuals of apparently a domestic species, it seems to us not extravagant to consider them as having become accidentally emancipated from their original condition of servitude. And this may perhaps receive some confirmation from a very ancient notice of the animal just named. In the sublime reproof of Job, by the Lord out of the whirlwind, He asks, "Who hath sent out the wild ass free? or who hath loosened the bands of the wild ass?"[1] We would then, in reference to the animal under consideration, suggest the probability that the F. maniculata is descended from the Egyptian domestic Cat, instead of being its original, and that its gaunt form is the natural result of its precarious mode of living in the deserts of Nubia. Our species we should regard as of the same lineage, but transmitted in that state of dependence in which it was originally possessed.
The chief utility of the Cat to man, is its habit of preying upon the rats and mice which infest our dwellings. A good mouser will follow up the pursuit of these pests, with a sort of professional
- ↑ Job xxxix. 5.
