The amazing story comes from Japan of the crossing of a cat and dog, and we can only hope that it wil! meet the eye of Mr. St. Maurs er some other writer on animal life. Happily we are not concerned with the probabilities of the business, but, as this is a dull world, the story, as reproduced in the "Japan Times & Mail," may be given. It reads thus:—Is it cats or is it pups? That is the question, since Mrs, Cat presented Mr. Dog with a full litter of s mothing, over which the arguments wax strong. Maga Fujimura, a peasant-farmer in the Yamaguchi Prefecture, loves his dogs and cats better than his children, and he keeps a dozen or more pets, which not lead a "dog and cat life'—far from that. They make up a very peaceful and happy family. The farmer, because of his love for the animals, is called by the neighbours "the dog maniac.'"
But when the story of how one of his tortoseshell cats bore a litter of kittens, which afterwards tumed out to be puppies, went the rounds there was great Interest' at. the farmhouse, and the neighbours no longer made fun of the farmer, but praised him so that they could-get in his favour and thus see the strange litter. The dog, the proud father of the mixed up litter, immediately carried the young animals eff to a mother of their own kind, who is looking after them, while the tortoiseshell cat broods in the sunlight without her kittens' around her.
The new animal should be extraordinarily useful far something or other.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.