Alexander Wilson and the Mouse.
About the time when Alexander Wilson formed the design of drawing the American birds, and writing those descriptions which, when published, gave him that name which has clung to him, "the American Ornithologist" he had a school within a few miles of Philadelphia. He was then a keen student of the animal life around him. In 1802 he wrote to his friend Bertram, and tells him of his having had "live crows, hawks, and owls; opossums, squirrels, snakes, lizards," &c. He tells him that his room sometimes reminded him of Noah's ark, and comically adds, "but Noah had a wife in one corner of it, and in this particular our parallel does not altogether tally. I receive every subject of natural history that is brought to me; and, though they do not march into my ark from all quarters, as they did into that of our great ancestor, yet I find means, by the distribution of a few fivepenny bits, to make them find the way fast enough. A boy, not long ago, brought me a large basketful of crows. I expect his next load will be bull-frogs, if I don't soon issue orders to the contrary. One of my boys caught a mouse in school a few days ago, and directly marched up to me with his prisoner. I set about drawing it the same evening, and all the while the pantings of its little heart showed it to be in the most extreme agonies of fear. I had intended to kill it, in order to fix it in the claws of a stuffed owl; but, happening to spill a few drops of water near where it was tied, it lapped it up with such eagerness, and looked in my face with such an eye of supplicating terror, as perfectly overcame me. I immediately restored it to life and liberty. The agonies of a prisoner at the stake, while the fire and instruments of torture are preparing, could not be more severe than the sufferings of that poor mouse; and, insignificant as the object was, I felt at that moment the sweet sensation that mercy leaves in the mind when she triumphs over cruelty."[174]
HARES, RABBITS, GUINEA-PIG.
All gnawing creatures, belonging to the Glirine or Rodentia order. Charles Lamb has written on the hare, in one view of that finely-flavoured beast, as only Elia could write. But the poet Cowper has made the hare's history peculiarly pleasing and familiar. How often in his letters he alludes to his hares! Mrs E. B. Browning, in her exquisitely delicate and pathetic poem, "Cowper's Grave," thus alludes to Cowper's pets—
"Wild, timid hares were drawn from woods to share his home caresses,
Uplooking to his human eyes with sylvan tendernesses;
The very world, by God's constraint, from falsehood's ways removing,
Its women and its men became, beside him, true and loving."
Not many years ago the compiler saw traces of the holes the poet had cut in the skirting-boards of the room for their ingress and egress, that they might have ampler room for wandering. His epitaphs on two of them are often quoted. Rabbits are peculiarly the pets of boys, and though, when wild, often great vermin, from their destructive habits and their mining operations, are yet said to contribute much to the revenue of one European monarch.
How Mr Malthus ought to have hated guinea-pigs, those fertile little lumps of blotched fur! Few creatures can be more productive.