ay, and,
refusing to give it suck, it perished on the cold ground. Some time
after, she gave birth to three more, one of which had the misfortune
not to be clad in the same colors as the mother. It was therefore
ousted by the unnatural parent; and, although again and again replaced
in its bed, it was as frequently turned out again. The owner of the
cat, finding it useless to persist in what puss had determined should
not be, in humanity consigned the kitten to a watery grave,--the victim
of a parent's pride and cruelty.

"I once saw," says De la Croix, "a lecturer upon experimental
philosophy place a cat under the glass receiver of an air-pump, for the
purpose of demonstrating that very certain fact, that life cannot be
supported without air and respiration. The lecturer had already made
several strokes with the piston, in order to exhaust the receiver of
its air, when the animal, who began to feel herself very uncomfortable
in the rarefied atmosphere, was fortunate enough to discover the source
from which her uneasiness proceeded. She placed her paw upon the hole
through which the air escaped, and thus prevented any more from passing
out of the receiver. All the exertions of the philosopher were now
unavailing: in vain he drew the piston; the cat's paw effectually
prevented its operation. Hoping to effect his purpose, he let air again
into the receiver, which as soon as the cat perceived, she withdrew her
paw from the aperture; but whenever he attempted to exhaust the
receiver, she applied her paw as before. All the spectators clapped
their hands in admiration of the wonderful sagacity of the animal, and
the lecturer found himself under the necessity of liberating her, and
substituting in her place another, that possessed less penetration, and
enabled him to exhibit the cruel experiment."

A lady at Potsdam, in Prussia, tells an anecdote of one of her
children, who, when about six years old, got a splinter of wood into
her foot, early one morning, and, sitting down on the floor of the
chamber, cried most vehemently. Her elder sister, asleep in the same
apartment, was in the act of getting up to inquire the cause of her
sister's tears, when she observed the cat, who was a favorite playmate
of the children, and of a gentle and peaceable disposition, leave her
seat under the stove, go up to the crying girl, and, with one of her
paws, give her so smart a blow upon the cheek as to draw blood; and
with the utmost gravity r