We could go on multiplying, ad nauseam, instances of this kind, but must conclude the catalogue of absurdities by stating that there is a firm belief on the part of many persons that it is the Zoological Society which has proposed the large reward, which every one has heard of, for the tortoiseshell Tom. “The only one ever known” has been offered accordingly at the exceedingly low figure of 250l. On one occasion a communication was received from some person of consideration in Thuringia, requesting to be informed of the amount of the proffered prize, which he was about to claim. This was shortly followed by a letter from another person, evidently written in a fury, cautioning the society against giving the prize to the previous writer, as he was not the breeder of the cat, but was only trying to buy it for less than its value, “in which he would never succeed so long as the true breeder lived.” To prevent further applications on the behalf of growers of this unique animal, we may as well state that tortoiseshell Toms may be had in many quarters.
We have said that the value of animals depends upon the state of the wild-beast market. “Wild-beast market!” exclaims the reader; “and where can that be?” Every one knows that London can furnish anything for money; and if any lady or gentleman wants lions or tigers, there are dealers in Ratcliffe Highway and the adjacent parts, who have them on the premises, and will sell them at five minutes’ notice. They “talk as familiarly of lions as ladies do of puppy dogs;” and a gentleman who purchased a bear of one of them, lately informed us that the salesman coolly proposed that he should take him home with him in a cab! We once had occasion to visit the establishment of one of these dealers, and were shown up a ladder into a cockloft, where, hearing a bumping, and perceiving a lifting motion in a trap-door, we inquired the reason, which called forth the dry remark that it was only three lions at play in a box below. Although these men generally manage to secure their live stock in a satisfactory manner, yet accidents will occur in the best-regulated lion-stores. A wild-beast merchant, for instance, informed us that one night he was awakened by his wife, who drew his attention to a noise in the back-yard, where he had placed two lions on the previous evening. On putting his head out of the window—his room was on the ground-floor—there were the lions loose, and, with their paws on the window-sill, looking grimly in upon him. A good whip and a determined air consigned Leo to his cage again without further trouble. On another occasion this same man, hearing a noise in his back premises, found to his horror that an elephant, with his pick-lock trunk, had let out a hyæna and a nylghau from their cages, and was busy undoing the fastenings of a den full of lions! The same resolute spirit, however, soon restored order. Amateurs have not always the same courage or self-possession, and they immediately have recourse to the garden-folks to get them out of their difficulties, as a housekeeper would send to the station-house on finding a burglar secreted in his cellar. On one occasion a gentleman, who had offered a rattlesnake and its young to the gardens at a high price, sent suddenly to the superintendent to implore immediate assistance, as the said snake, with half a score venomous offspring, had escaped from their box and scattered themselves in his nursery. The possessor, to avoid worse losses, was only too glad to be rid of his guests at any pecuniary sacrifice.
We cannot close our survey without touching upon the cost of the commissariat. The slaughtered beasts appropriated to the carnivora, we have before stated, cost in the year 1854 no less a sum than 1,367l. 19s. 5d. If we go through the other items of food, we shall give some notion of the expense and the variety of the banquet to which the animals daily sat down during that year. Thus we see hay figures for 912l. 14s.; corn, seeds, &c., 700l. 8s. 8d.; bread, buns, &c. (for the monkeys), 150l. 16s. 8d.; eggs, 87l. 4s. 1d. (for the ant-eater principally); milk, 69l. 6s. 2d.; mangold-wurzel, carrots, and turnips, 22l. 6s.; dog-biscuit, 135l. 19s. 10d. (for the bears and wolves and dogs chiefly); fish (for the otters, seal, pelicans, &c.), 214l. 8s. 8d.; green tares, 23l. 16s. 8d.; rabbits and pigeons (for the snakes), 33l. 13s. 2d.; rice and oil-cake, 66l. 15s.; sundries, including fruit, vegetables, grasshoppers, snakes, mealworms, figs, sugar, &c. (for the birds principally), 157l. 1s. 11d.: making a total of 3,942l. 8s. 3d.; a great increase on the food bill of 1853, and which was caused entirely by the advance of prices.
The pitch of excellence to which the gardens have arrived has naturally resulted in drawing the increased attention of the public towards them. We have only to contrast, for instance, the number of people who entered in the year 1848—the first in which a more liberal system of management came into play—with those who passed in in 1854, to see that the establishment flourishes under the auspices of the new management; for while in the former year only 142,456 persons passed through the turnstiles, the number had risen in the latter to 407,676. It is interesting to observe that, although an increase of full 100 per cent. took place upon the privileged and ordinary shilling visitors during that interval, yet that the reduction of the admittance-charge to sixpence on Mondays and holidays was the main cause of the gradual influx of visitors—the year 1848 showing only 60,566 admittances of these holiday-folks and working-people, to 196,278 in 1854. Here, then, we have an increase of 135,712 persons, many of whom were, no doubt, rescued, on those days at least, from the fascinations of the public-house. With all this flood of life—the greater portion of it undoubtedly belonging to the labouring-classes,—not the slightest injury has been done to the gardens. A flower or two may have been picked, but not by that class of Englishmen who were once thought too brutal to be allowed access unwatched to any public exhibition. Every year that passes over our heads proves that such shows as these are splendid examples of the method of teaching introduced by Bell and Lancaster; that they furnish instruction of a nature which is never forgotten, and which refines at the same time that it delights.
RATS.
Boswell relates that the wits who assembled at the house of Sir Joshua Reynolds to hear Grainger’s poem on the “Sugar-cane” read in manuscript, burst into laughter when, after much pompous blank-verse, a new paragraph commenced with the invocation—
“Now, Muse, let’s sing of rats.”
But if a mean topic for the bard, they are an interesting subject to the naturalist, an anxious one to the agriculturist, and of some importance to everybody. Though it was no easy matter to throw around them a halo of poetry, and to elevate them into epic dignity—a difficulty which was nowise surmounted by calling them, as Grainger subsequently did, “the whisker’d vermin race”—yet there was nothing with which they had a more serious practical connection than the “sugar-cane.” It was reckoned that in Jamaica they consumed a twentieth part of the entire crop, and 30,000 were destroyed in one year in a single plantation. In fact, rats are to the earth what sparrows are to the air—universally present. Unlike their feathered analogues, we rarely see them, and consequently have little idea of the liberality with which they are distributed over every portion of the habitable globe. They swarm in myriads in the vast network of sewers under our feet, and by means of our house-drains have free access to our basements, under which they burrow; in the walls they establish a series of hidden passages; they rove beneath the floors and the roof, and thus establish themselves above, below, and beside us. In the remote islands of the Pacific they equally abound, and are sometimes the only inhabitants. But we shall not attempt to write the universal history of the rat. It is enough if we narrate his doings in Great Britain.