On the peculiar formation of the tails in the Malay and Manilla cats / by George Bennett.

  • Bennett, George, 1804-1893.
Date:
[1831?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the peculiar formation of the tails in the Malay and Manilla cats / by George Bennett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    ON THK PECULIAR FORMATION OK THE TAILS IN THE MALAY AND MA- NILLA CATS. By George Bennett, M.R.C.S, &c. The formation of the tail of the Malay cat is peculiar, and, I believe, has hither- to been unnoticed by any author. Its appearance miijht induce us to consider it as the result of injury, or disease, did we not observe the same form common to all the individuals of the Malay breed. The accompanying figures will illustrate this remarkable formation. Fig. 2. Fig. 1st represents its appearance when covered with the fur, and fig. 2d when dissected so as to shew the skeleton. Preparations in the latter state have been deposited in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, in London. It is a curious circumstance, that, al- though this deformity exists in the whole race, no regular character in the forma- tion prevails. Capt. Rees, of the Calcutta ship. Lord Amherst, related to me that he had had a female Malay cat which bred with_ an English male cat of the usual species ; of the kittens which it bore some had short and others long tails. Nature, ever capricious in her works, has again amused herself with the feline race of the Island of Lu^onia, which is almost in a tailless condition. What may be considered the caudal extremity of these latter animals, consists solely of two, or at most three, very short verte- brae, slender and tapering, resemblingthe terminal vertebrae of the common cat’s tail. During ray stay at Cavite, the ship’s cook had a female cat, of the Manilla or tailless breed, which pro- duced kittens; some of her offspring were, like the mother, tailless, whilst others had the crooked tail of the Ma- lay cat, to which breed the male parent most probably belonged. The small portion of tail the Manilla cat pos- sesses, has, when covered with the fur, an abrupt termination, presenting the appearance of the extremity having been bitten or chopped off (see Fig. 3); and tliis is the idea we were first led to en- tertain. Examination of the skeleton, however, at once sets the (piestion at rest, and sufficiently demonstrates that the deficiency of tail in the Manilla, and its distortion in the Malay cats, is in no way the result of injury. Analogous to this distortion are the preparations in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London, of the perch (percafluvialilis), found on the estate of Sir W. W. Wynn, with preternatural distorted spine. London, May 28, 1831.