QUADRUPEDS. 461 



an incident as many have supposed ; and therefore may 

 be a justification of those authors who have gravely 

 mentioned, what some have deemed to be a wild and 

 improbable story. 



So many people went to see the little squirrels suckled 

 by a cat, that the foster mother became jealous of her 

 charge, and in pain for their safety ; and therefore hid 

 them over the ceiling, where one died. This circum- 

 stance shows her affection for these foundlings, and that 

 she supposes the squirrels to be her own young. Thus 

 hens, when they have hatched ducklings, are equally 

 attached to them as if they were their own chickens. 



HORSE. 



AN old hunting mare, which ran on the common, being 

 taken very ill, ran down into the village, as it were 

 to implore the help of men, and died the night following 

 in the street. 



HOUNDS. 



THE king's stag hounds came down to Alton, attended 

 by a huntsman and six yeomen prickers, with horns, to 

 try for the stag that has haunted Harteley Wood and 

 its environs for so long a time. Many hundreds of 

 people, horse and foot, attended the dogs to see the 

 deer unharboured ; but though the huntsman drew 



I was much surprised at hearing from a man who kept a bird and cage 

 shop in London, that not less than twenty thousand squirrels are annually 

 sold there for the menus plaisirs of cockneys, part of which come from 

 France, but the greater number are brought in by labourers to Newgate 

 and Leadenhall markets, where any morning during the season four or 

 five hundred might be bought. He said that he himself sold annually 

 about seven hundred : and, he added, that about once in seven years the 

 breed of squirrels entirely fails, but that in other seasons they are equally 

 prolific The subject was introduced by his answering to a woman who 

 came in to buy a squirrel, that he had not had one that season, but 

 before that time in the last season he had sold five hundred. It appears 

 that the mere manufacture of squirrel cages for Londoners is no small 

 concern. W. H. 



