io6 
NATURE’S HAPPY FAMILIES. 
MONG the varied sights, non-euphoniously termed 
“gutter-shows,” of the busy streets of London and 
our large provincial towns, few have had greater 
popularity in their day than the so-called “ Happy 
Family.” At the present time, the once familiar spectacle of the 
cage mounted on wheels, with its heterogeneous collection of 
small mammals and birds, rapacious and otherwise, living in 
apparent amity together, is rapidly becoming a thing of the 
past. As the novelty has worn off, the receipts have doubt- 
less declined proportionately ; and the enterprising devisers or 
trainers of these liliputian menageries have been compelled to 
direct their questionable talents elsewhere. To Selbornians 
this will hardly be a matter of regret. The cowed appearance 
of the majority of the unhappy creatures thus “ cabin’d, cribb’d, 
confin’d,” is sufficient evidence of the suffering they have 
endured. In addition, the knowledge remains that, under the 
ordeal they have passed, there must of necessity have been 
many victims ere any such result could have been attained. 
But it is not to these exhibitions which it is primarily intended 
to refer, but to kindred displays, apart from human agency, 
which are from time to time observed in the United Kingdom. 
The vagaries of Nature are often beyond comprehension. 
Rules, seemingly of the most inflexible type are often broken, 
and there are few without an exception. Prominent in this 
category are the peculiar associations of animals of totally 
opposite disposition, which occur underground ; realising to a 
certain extent the well-known lines of the Faerie Queen : — 
“The lyon there did with the lambe consort, 
And eke the dove sate by the faulcon’s side ; 
Ne each of the other feared fraud, or tort, 
But did in safe securitie abide ! ” 
Not long since, two practical illustrations of Spenser’s words 
came under the writer’s notice, in one day, whilst shooting in 
the Cambridgeshire fens. While I was ferreting in the centre of 
a field honeycombed with burrows, a couple of rabbits bolted 
and were immediately followed, from the same hole, by a blue- 
rock pigeon. Shortly afterwards, close by, the same incident was 
repeated. An hour or two later, under identical circumstances 
in a fresh spot half a mile away, a pair of full grown polecats 
emerged from some earths, out of which, just previously, several 
rabbits had been driven. On enquiry it was ascertained, on 
good authority, that for many years a colony of polecats had 
inhabited this subterranean abode, jointly with rabbits ; and 
that the latter were more numerous and destructive there than 
in any other portion of the estate. Whilst such semi-social 
relations between pigeons and rabbits may be regarded as 
curious, that of ferocious polecats and timid rabbits hardly seems 
