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 26 Burmah these thrice fortunate animals are treated with becoming deference; and the Hungarian scientist, Vambery, tells of a Buddhist convent in eastern Thibet, where there were so many pussies, all sleek and fat, that he could not forbear asking the pious inmates why they deemed it necessary to keep such a feline colony. "All things have their uses," was the serene reply. "Cats are carnal-minded, clamorous, and far from cleanly; but they atone for their sins by destroying rats, mice, and weasels, and thus spare us the temptation of imbruing our hands in the blood of our fellow creatures."—For the delicate refinements of casuistry, one must still turn to the subtle and contemplative East.

It was an ill day for Pussy when she left this land of ease, and began her bleak northwestern journey. Sir John Lubbock asserts that there is no proof of her domestication in Great Britain or in France before the ninth century; but the dim records of those far-off years leave much untold, and she may have arrived quietly and without ostentation a hundred years or so earlier. That her usefulness was recognized, and that she was highly prized as long as her rarity enhanced her value, is shown by an ancient statute ascribed to Howel Dda, or Howel the Good, a Welsh prince whose life is otherwise shrouded in obscurity. This admirable ruler—assuredly the Wise as well as the Good—made a law in 948,