A FRIENDLY RAT 233 
room, and come at call to be fed, and who mani- 
fested an almost painful interest in his coat buttons, 
examining them every day as if anxious to find out 
their true significance. Then there was my old 
friend, Miss Hopley, the writer on reptiles, who 
died recently, aged 99 years, who tamed newts, 
but whose favourite pet was a slow-worm. She 
was never tired of expatiating on its lovable 
qualities. One finds Viscount Grey’s pet squirrels 
more engaging, for these are wild squirrels in a 
wood in Northumberland, who quickly find out 
when he is at home and make their way to the 
house, scale the walls, and invade the library; 
then, Jumping upon his writing-table, are rewarded 
with nuts, which they take from his hand. Another 
Northumbrian friend of the writer keeps, or 
kept, a pet cormorant, and finds him no less greedy 
in the domestic than in the wild state. After 
catching and swallowing fish all the morning in a 
neighbouring river, he wings his way home at 
meal-times, screaming to be fed, and ready to 
devour all the meat and pudding he can get. 
The list of strange creatures might be extended 
indefinitely, even fishes included; but who has 
ever heard of a tame pet rat? Not the small 
white, pink-eyed variety, artificially bred, which 
one may buy at any dealer’s, but a common brown 
rat, Mus decumanus, one of the commonest wild 
animals in England and certainly the most dis- 
liked. Yet this wonder has been witnessed recently 
in the village of Lelant, in West Cornwall. Here 
