A FRIENDLY RAT 238 



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 dealers, 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 



