don firm at the death of its "best foundry cat,"—which phrase seemed puzzling until explanation was made. The sand used for casts is mixed with flour, and this flour attracts mice and rats that too often spoil the moulds. Cats are kept to eat the mice, and they in turn must be taught not to walk about on the moulds, nor scratch, nor injure them in any way. In these respects the "best foundry cat" had been made perfect by practice, and his loss was an event to be deplored. Every department of this house has its feline police corps, even the galvanizing shop, where a brindled veteran knows by long experience that hot metal spurts when plates are dipped in it, and has learned to get under cover at this critical juncture.
The recognition of the cat's utility, and her employment in public service, are not merely features of modern economics. Among the requisitions laid by Frederick the Great—the most hard-headed and hard-hearted of kings and soldiers—upon more than one little Saxon and Silesian town, was a levy of cats for the guarding of army stores. Sometimes it even happened that the town could not provide the number of pussies demanded (perhaps the poor war-ravaged inhabitants loved their pets, having little else left them in the world), and permission was humbly asked that weasels should be sent instead.
