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 86 reading there no answer to the question, he ran back to the house, reappearing in a moment with a large cat in his arms. Pushing open its eyelids with his forefinger,—an operation to which the animal submitted with a patience evidently born of long habitude,—he said carelessly, "Look, it wants still an hour and more to noon." When the missionary expressed his amazement at this primitive time-piece, other natives explained to him that on cloudy days their cats always served them as dials. "They pointed out that the pupils of the creature's eyes grew gradually narrower until noon, when they were little more than thin perpendicular lines, and that with the descent of the sun began their slow expansion."

It was the waxing and waning of the light in Pussy's beautiful eyes, with the waxing and waning of the day, which gave her, centuries before, her proud preëminence in the great Sun-temple of Heliopolis.

Maister Salmon is the only English writer who has a word to say on this subject, and even he confesses he has never taken the trouble to make any observations for himself. The sole use of the cat in England was to hunt mice and rats; and while there are constant allusions in early English letters to her vigilance and prowess, while she figures in proverbs, and old saws, and rude rhymes, it is