Proud Wolsey, it will be recollected, was on familiar terms with a venerable carp; Cowper doffed his melancholy to play with his hares; and Clive owned a pet tortoise. Less noted folk have taken kindly to snakes, frogs, lizards, hedgehogs, and other animals not usually included in the category of domestic pets. The driver of a London Hansom was wont to carry a little cub fox on the top of his cab, to their mutual enjoyment, until returning from the Downs one Derby-day, the cab overset, and the cabman and his odd companion were both killed. Mr G. F. Berkeley made a household pet of a young stoat, rendered motherless by his gun. Totie soon accommodated himself to circumstances, and would leave his cage to wash himself in a finger-glass on the dinner-table, trotting back again as soon as his ablutions were performed, taking a piece of sponge-cake with him.

Sir John Lubbock contrived to win the affection of a Syrian wasp; but the game was hardly worth the candle, or sufficiently entertaining to encourage others to follow suit; although it is said that, strong in the new feminine faith that what man does woman can do, three maiden sisters sought to relieve the tedium of single-blessedness by devoting their leisure to the domestication of English-born wasps. Before a week was out, one fair experimentalist wore a large blue patch over her left eye, another carried her right arm in a sling, the third was altogether lost to the sight of anxious friends, and all had come to the conclusion that wasp-taming was not their forte. Better taste and greater discretion were shewn by the lady, who, becoming possessed of two butterflies of different species in a chrysalis state, resolved to try how far they would be amenable to kindness, and placed them for security in a glazed cabinet in her well-warmed bedroom. A few days before Christmas she was delighted by the appearance of a little yellow butterfly, but was puzzled how to cater for the delicate creature. Taking a fairy-rose then in bloom, she dropped a little honey and rose-water in a blossom, and put the plant in the cabinet, and soon had the satisfaction of seeing the butterfly take its first meal. In a fortnight it would leave the rose to settle on her hand when she called it by its name Psyche. By-and-by a peacock butterfly emerged into active life from the other chrysalis. The newcomer accepted the sensation of active life at once, and like its companion, delighted in being talked and sung to, both especially enjoying being waved in the air and danced up and down while quietly resting upon the hand of their mistress. Upon the coming of summer the cabinet was moved close to the window, and its doors thrown open. For some days neither of its tenants cared to venture beyond the window-sill, but one bright afternoon their protectress 'with many bitter tears' beheld them take wing and join some wild companions in the garden; at night, however, they returned to their lodgings. Next day they took the air again, and were not seen until September. One afternoon there came a heavy thunderstorm, and when it was over a yellow butterfly was found dead on the window-sill—which the lady, with some warrant, lamented over as her own particular one; the 'peacock' too would seem to have met a like fate, for it was never seen again.

The butterfly tamer had an eye for beauty, but ugliness is no bar to a lady's favour, so far as animal pets are concerned. It would be hard to find a more repulsive-looking reptile than the iguana, nevertheless the society of one afforded much pleasure to an American lady residing in Brazil. Pedro, as he was called, was well provided with raw meat, bananas, and milk; allowed to bask in his mistress's room in the daytime, and to make himself cosy between the mattresses of her bed when the sun went down, he cheerfully accepted the novel situation, like a wise iguana. His loving lady was wont to carry him abroad in her arms—a practice that kept acquaintances at a respectful distance—for, however they might pretend to admire Pedro's beadlike spots of black and white, his bright jewelled eyes, and elegant claws, they were careful not to make any near approaches. Nothing pleased Madame so much as to drop her pet without warning at the feet of unsuspecting gentlemen, and elicit from naval officers symptoms of terror such as would not have been drawn forth by an enemy's broadside or a lee-shore. Of course Pedro came to grief. Rambling one day unattended, he came across 'a marauding Frenchman,' his owner's maid arriving only in time to rescue his lifeless body. It was sent, wrapped in black crape, to a neighbour with a weakness for fricasseed lizard; but having seen this especial one fondled and caressed, he could not find the appetite to eat it; and so Pedro was consigned to the earth instead of the pot.

De Candolle tells of a fair Switzer who, unmindful of Red Riding Hood's sad fate, made a companion of a young wolf, and had the melancholy satisfaction of seeing the fond beast fall dead at her feet in a paroxysm of joy at her return home after a long absence. But although one wolf was faithful found, it does not follow that the fair sex are justified in going to the forest or jungle for pets. The proprietress of a loving leopard that came regularly to her chamber door in the dead of the night, and howled loudly enough to wake the Seven Sleepers, until its mistress turned out of bed and quieted her disturber with an offering of warm milk, might well doubt if she had bestowed her affection wisely. Such favourites, however kindly they take to domestication, are very undesirable additions to an orderly establishment. When Captain Burton was domiciled in Syria, the famous traveller left the management of his live-stock to his wife, and under her fostering care that department assumed formidable proportions. Not content with horses and goats, a camel, turkeys, geese, ducks, fowls, and pigeons, Mrs Burton must have her own especial pets—a white donkey, a young St Bernard dog, four English terriers, a Kurdish puppy, a snow-white Persian cat, a lamb, and a leopard. The last-named, according to the lady's account, became the pet of the household; which it deserved to be, if the household abhorred a quiet life, for the leopard behaved much after the manner of the gazelle whose owner sang:

Mrs Burton, with pretty good grace, confesses her husband had fair cause for saying his happy family reminded him of the House that Jack built; for the fowls and pigeons ate the seeds and destroyed the flowers; the cat fed upon the pigeons, the dogs worried the cat; while the idol of the household harried the goats until one of them drowned itself in sheer disgust, and frightened the donkey and camel by jumping upon their backs, and indulging in a shrieking solo, horrible enough to scare any animal of a well-regulated mind into madness.

Lady Hornby, while ambassadress at Constantinople, obtained, as she thought, a Turkish street dog, with whom she was soon on the best of terms. Introducing her pet to a gentleman who knew a dog when he saw one, he exclaimed: 'That's no dog; it is a common brute of a wild jackal!' 'Well,' rejoined the enlightened lady, 'anyhow, I have tamed him, and dog or jackal, don't mean to part with him!'

It was to her husband that Mr Frank Buckland was indebted for the Kurdish dog, whose prowess delighted him, despite the trouble entailed by its exhibition; for Arslan, imbued with the notion that he was created to rid the earth of his kind, conscientiously tried to fulfil his mission by killing every dog so unlucky as to cross his path. Fortunately for his master's serenity, Arslan's unkind attentions were confined to his own species; otherwise there would have been anything but joy in the house of Buckland, since that general lover of animal-kind was never yet without pet bears, beavers, or monkeys, calculated to excite the ire of a brave dog; and priding himself upon the brown rats, black rats, piebald rats, and white rats with pink eyes, which swarmed to the door of their cage to welcome his coming, and allowed him to handle them as he listed, while at the advent of a stranger they were up on their hind-legs in fighting position instanter.

Much, however, as he loved them, they increased and multiplied so quickly that Mr Buckland was by cruel necessity compelled, now and again, to carry a bagful away wherewith to regale the snakes of the Zoological Gardens; a method of riddance unavailable to the gentleman who tried his hand at porcupine-petting, and found the creature thoroughly deserved Shakspeare's epithet of 'fretful,' its inquisitiveness and restlessness rendering it the most unpleasant of all quadrupedal pets.

Strange pets usually come to some untimely end; as Miller Luke says, 'Things out o' natur never thrive.' But your animal lover need not go far afield for worthy objects upon which to expend his kind care, for he was a wise man who wrote, 'If we were to pet our useful and hard-working animals, we should find it both to our credit and advantage.'