for the sole use of an old woman who bore the honourable title, Mother of Cats, and whose duty it was to carry to the Holy City a number of Persian pussies. Her position was no sinecure, for all the distinction it conferred, the cat's rooted aversion to travel rendering it a troublesome charge; and the venerable "Mother" finally gave place to a young and active man, better able to cope with his sackful of turbulent prisoners. What strange survival of an ancient practice induced pious Moslems to send to the Prophet's shrine the animals that their faraway ancestors had carried devoutly to the temple of Bubastis? No one knows. The links between old and new have long ago been broken; and, as so often happens, the custom lingered on for countless years after its significance had been lost to men's unreasoning minds.
The great burying-grounds of favoured Egyptian cats were the thrice blessed fields of Speos Artemidos near the tombs of Beni Hasan, where thousands of little mummies reposed for centuries. It was reserved for our rude age to disturb their slumber, to desecrate their graves, to fling their ashes to the four winds of heaven, or, with base utilitarianism, to sell the poor little swathed and withered bodies—once so beautiful and gently tended—for any trifling sum they would bring from ribald tourists who infest the land. Many were even used as fer-
