XXI 



A FRIENDLY RAT 



MOST of our animals, also many creeping things, 

 such as our " wilde wormes in woods," common 

 toads, natterjacks, newts, and lizards, and stranger 

 still, many insects, have been tamed and kept as 

 pets. 



Badgers, otters, foxes, hares, and voles are 

 easily dealt with ; but that any person should 

 desire to fondle so prickly a creature as a hedgehog, 

 or so diabolical a mammalian as the bloodthirsty, 

 flat-headed little weasel, seems very odd. Spiders, 

 too, are uncomfortable pets ; you can't caress them 

 as you could a dormouse ; the most you can do 

 is to provide your spider with a clear glass bottle to 

 live in, and teach him to come out in response to 

 a musical sound, drawn from a banjo or fiddle, 

 to take a fly from your fingers and go back again 

 to its bottle. 



An acquaintance of the writer is partial to adders 

 as pets, and he handles them as freely as the 

 schoolboy does his innocuous ring-snake ; Mr. 

 Benjamin Kidd once gave us a delightful account 

 of his pet humble-bees, who used to fly about his 



