A grimalkin (also called a greymalkin) is an archaic term for a cat. The term stems from grey (the colour) plus malkin, an archaic term with several meanings (a cat, a low class woman, a weakling, a mop or a name) derived from a hypocoristic form of the female name Maud. Scottish legend makes reference to the grimalkin as a faery cat that dwells in the highlands. Nostradamus the French prophet & astrologer, 1503-1566, had a cat named Grimalkin. Beware the Cat was published in 1570 by William Baldwin. The novel is a story of talking cats, and part of it relates the story of the Grimalkin's death. According to its editors, the story, and thus the name, originates with Baldwin in terms of being the earliest example known in print.
How many species are there in Quebec? In total, Quebec has 89 species of mammals living in terrestrial, freshwater or saltwater ecosystems. Below, we have listed all the species, by order. A camera, text or globe icon next to a species' name indicates a link to a photo, description or distribution map of that species.
Currently, estimates of the total number of species range from about 10 million to a billion, but these estimates are tentative, and may be off by many orders of magnitude. By comparison, there are probably between 10 and 30 million species of animals, the vast majority of them insects. The number of scientifically recognized species of animals is about 1,250,000. There are almost 300,000 recognized species of plants.