CURIOUS MESSMATES 77 



the vivid imagination of the author ultimately got 

 out of bounds to the detriment of his claim for 

 veracity, and his fame came to a sudden end 

 through his describing a flight of wombats that he 

 had witnessed ; for, unfortunately, the wombat, 

 in spite of the last syllable of its name, is not 

 endowed with the power to fly. 



It is a well-known fact that animals will often 

 act as foster-mothers to the young of others, and 

 many curious instances of such associations have 

 come under the writer's notice, more especially 

 at the Zoological Gardens, where a number of 

 creatures are born during the course of a year. 

 Wolf and fox cubs are frequently placed in charge 

 of female domestic dogs, who bring them up with 

 their own puppies, and several litters of young 

 polar bears have been mothered by canine foster- 

 parents. On one occasion the calf of a gnu (a 

 species of antelope) was given in charge of a cow, 

 and several years back a domestic cat acted as 

 foster-mother to some young squirrels. Gilbert 

 White mentions an instance of a cat rearing some 

 baby squirrels, and also tells us of another cat 

 which suckled a leveret ; while the present writer 

 has seen a young hare and a pair of fledgling 

 blackbirds which dwelt together and were on the 

 most friendly terms with one another. 



Amongst the class of animals which we have 

 termed unavoidable companions are the numerous 

 kinds of parasites that are ever ready to attach 

 themselves to the person of almost every living 

 creature, for, to quote the words of De Morgan — 



