THE USEFULNESS OF CATS.
[TO TUE EDITOR Or Tits EtracrATors.1
SIR,—In the article on this harmless, necessary animal in your issue of August 13th less than justice is done to its usefulness. If it is valuable as a means of keeping plague at a distance, it is no less so on account of its well-known habit of waging war against snakes. This alone might easily account for its worship in Egypt or in any country infected by poisonous members of that large family.
For many years I have been running a cattle-station in Queensland, where snakes are tolerably numerous. At the bead station we have always kept up a standing army of from fifteen to twenty cats, and have been practically free from the presence of snakes about the buildings and yards. That this was owing to the presence of our cats I have no doubt whatever. They were always on the look-out, and I have often seen members of our feline bodyguard growling over dead or dying snakes, and have more than once witnessed savage encounters between them and their victims. On the other hand, martyrs to their duty were from time to time found dead in the morning with all the evidence of a fight and their defeat in the shape of snake-bite on their bodies.—.
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