M/SS BENSON AND HER PETS. 63 
their decease. The cygnets, it is true, were said to have died 
of being promenaded too much at a tender age, by their vain- 
glorious parents, but this strikes one as a very questionable 
cause of dissolution. It would hardly pass muster with a care- 
ful coroner ; the melancholy fact seems to be that in a majority 
of cases, the very propinquity and touch, perhaps even the 
odour of a human being, is fatal to the coy wild forms of nature. 
We succeed, by gentle movements and judicious care, in remov- 
ing the little creature’s fear ; it no longer shudders at our 
approach, and we think that all danger is past. But our 
presence has subtly poisoned it, and it dies, of no tangible hurt 
and in no paro.\ysm of terror, but of the blight and malady of 
mankind. When we have outgrown the childish delight of 
handling and caressing a captured wild creature, we may solve 
this difficulty of its tendency to expire abruptly, and, led to it 
by slow degrees, the wild animals may even grow to endure 
our presence, as their domesticated brethren have contrived to 
do. But the truth is, we are as yet only on the threshold of 
discovery as to our relations with beasts and birds. We have 
not learned the elements of their language or the simplest secrets 
of their hearts. Meanwhile, their less frequent species are 
melting before us, and we find ourselves wakening to the 
importance of comprehending and protecting them at the very 
moment when it seems to have become too late to hope for their 
preservation. If the human race could only have arriv’ed more 
rapidly at a sense of the value of rare living creatures, and more 
slowly at the perfection of weapons of attack, it would have 
been a happy thing for the humane student of zoology. 
New stories of dogs are always welcome, and IMiss Benson tells 
charmingly the tale of Watch, a silky collie, who had all the arts 
and graces of his kind. His name was a difficulty to him, the word 
meaning, to his bewilderment, other things beside himself. He 
was fond of going to prayers in chapel, and on one memor- 
able occasion, when the twenty-sixth chapter of St. Matthew 
was being read, “ Watch got more and more excited as he heard 
his own name repeated more and more emphatically, until at the 
final, ‘ I say unto all, watch,' he ran eagerly into the middle — 
such exciting, personal prayers ! ” Watch disliked other dogs of 
all sorts, but was highly indulgent to cats and guinea-pigs. 
Speaking of guinea-pigs. Miss Benson has given to these prolific 
conies an attention which should entitle her to the presidency of 
that obscure but influential society which exists, so I have been 
told, for the encouragement of the guinea-pig and its protection 
against evil tongues. Her passionate individualism has led her 
to try and differentiate between the specimens of that seething 
vitality, to which she tries, with an energy that faints in the 
fourth generation, to give positive names. To make a chart of 
the Milk}' Way seems a trifling enterprise by the side of draw- 
ing up a family tree of guinea-pigs, but Miss Benson is an 
intrepid genealogist. She is an exact observer, too, as we 
