A charming little foreign pet for the house is the suricate, or meer-cat. This pretty creature, which, if we remember rightly, was among the number of Frank Buckland’s animal companions, is an active and vivacious little fellow, some 10 in. long, with greenish-brown fur, large bright eyes, a short pointed nose and dainty paws, which, like the squirrel’s or the racoon’s, are used as hands, to hold, to handle, and to ask for more. Eloquent in supplication, tenacious in retention, the suricate’s paws are expressive, plaintive, and wholly irresistible. The creature is made for a pet, and is so affectionate to its master that it can undergo any degree of “spoiling” without injury to its temper. A larger, more beautiful, and most charming creature, not unlike the suricate in some respects, though in no way related to it, is the brown opossum from Tasmania. “Sooty Phalanger” is the elegant name given to it by naturalists; but except when the specimen kept by the writer discovered that a chimney made a good substitute for a hollow tree for its midday sleep, there was nothing in its appearance to justify the scientific adjective. The fur is of the richest dark-brown, and covers its prehensile tail like a fur boa. Its head is small, with a pink nose and very large brown eyes; and it has a “compound” hand, with the claws on its fingers, and an almost human and clawless thumb, with the aid of which it can hold a wine-glass, or eat jam out of a teaspoon. That owned by the writer was, without exception, the most fearless and affectionate pet he has ever known. In the evening, when it was most lively, it would climb on to the shoulder of any of its visitors, and take any food given it. It had a mania for cleanliness, always “washing” its hands after taking food, or even after running across the room, and was always anxious to do the same office by the hands of any one who fed it. It made friends with the dogs, and would “wash” their faces for them, catching hold of an old setter’s nose with its sharp little claws, to hold it steady while it licked its face. The staircase and banisters furnished a gymnasium for exercise in the winter, and in summer it could be trusted among the trees in the garden. This opossum is becoming scarce, owing to the demand for its fur; but there is little doubt that specimens could still be bought for a moderate sum. That owned by the writer cost three pounds. The American grey squirrel is a common and hardy species, which becomes very tame, though scarcely so pretty as our red squirrel; and the South American coatis, especially the small kind, are most amusing pets; though, like the mongoose, they need to be kept warm. All the coatis are sociable, lively creatures, quite omnivorous, and with as many odd tricks as a monkey. The mongoose, that “familiar” of Indian households, has such a natural bias for human society, that, according to Mr. Kipling, it will often come into a house from the jungle, and voluntarily enrol itself among the members of the family. It is a slim, active little animal, varying from a foot to nearly two feet in length, of a curious mottled silvery-grey colour, and so amazingly rapid in its movements that its victory over the cobra is not surprising. Provided that it is kept warm in winter, it will live well in an English home, and loses none of those domestic qualities which make it such a favourite in India. The marmot and the viscacha, or prairie-dog, are amusing little fellows, and if allowed the use of a small enclosure in which the marmots can burrow and make hay for the winter, and the viscachas make their “collections” of curiosities, either species would, no doubt, add to the interest of an English country house. But as both the marmot and the viscacha hibernate in winter, their owner must be prepared for their disappearance underground from Christmas until March.
There is only one monkey which we can thoroughly recommend as an indoor pet, the beautiful and intelligent little Capuchin. The marmosets, even more beautiful and equally pleasing, are too delicate for our climate, and die of colds and coughs after the first fogs of winter. But the lively little Capuchins may be kept for years in an English house; and no monkey approaches their good-temper and pretty winning ways. They all have good round heads, with black fur on the top and light-brown on the cheeks. Some have pinkish faces, and others dark-brown skins, with eyes like brown jewels. Their faces are most expressive, and seldom still, for they take deep and abiding interest in everything in or about their cages. One kept in a large house in Leicestershire had learnt to put out burning-paper, which it did most adroitly by beating it with its hands or knocking it against the floor. Another, which was kept at the Zoo, would, if it got a match, collect a heap of straw, strike the match, light its bonfire, and dance round it. This dangerous accomplishment led to its removal from the cages on Saturdays and Bank-holidays, when the crowd makes it difficult to keep a watch on its movements. The Capuchin is so small, so pretty, and so clever, that it seems to embody all the good and none of the bad points of monkey nature.
No one who has seen pumas when kindly treated in captivity can doubt the justice of the impression that these friendly and beautiful cats at once produce, that they must be suited for pets and companions. The general verdict of South Americans as to their gentleness and natural liking for man, even when wild on the Pampas, is given in some detail in a later chapter on Animal Temper. There was at least one puma kept as a pet in this country, by Captain Marshall, the owner of a unique private menagerie at Marlow on the Thames. Reports of a gentleman, “with a tame lioness by his side,” having been seen sitting by a lock gate on the Thames, evidently pointed to the taming, not of a lioness, which, however domesticated among those whom it knows, would be too dangerous and uncertain a creature to take abroad, but of a puma, which, being neither striped nor spotted, would be at once described as a “lioness” by the ordinary “man in a boat.” This was the case, and the following is Captain Marshall’s short account of his late pet, for unfortunately it died of liver-complaint before the writer could ask to make its acquaintance. “My big full-grown puma,” writes its master, “was as tame as a cat. It was kept for months on a chain and collar, and could be led about. It would rest its head on my lap, and I could pull it about as much as I liked. I also had a baby one, but she was not tame.” The lovely snow leopard, which came to the Zoo in 1894, was a lady’s pet. It had always been fed upon cooked meat, and was perfectly tame. The writer has patted it as it lay in its box in the Lion House, and it merely looked up exactly like a sleepy grey Angora cat. Yet this was a full-grown leopard, in perfect condition and health, living in the next cage to one of the black variety, which was almost the wildest creature in the menagerie.
Those who possess an aviary may be interested to hear that at the Zoo, blackcaps, whitethroats, garden-warblers, and nightingales, all birds of passage, are living in excellent health through the winter; and one nightingale was singing on December 29, but the song, though very beautiful, was not a true nightingale’s note, but largely borrowed from that of the bulbul in the next aviary, the bird being a young one, caught in the autumn. It is evident, from the experiment at the Zoo, that our summer warblers may be kept as pets; but the bird of all others suited for the aviary, but neglected as a rule in England, is the bulbul. The Persian variety has the finest song, but the Indian is an even prettier bird, and sings exquisitely. In appearance, the bulbuls are not unlike the Bohemian waxwing, with a black conical top-knot, cinnamon-coloured backs, red-and-white or yellow-and-white cheeks, and white breasts, with some bright colour near the tail. The note is most liquid and beautiful, and the bird has a pretty habit of varying the volume of the sound, singing loudly in the open, and almost whispering its song to its master or mistress if confined in a room. We might do worse than follow the example of the Persians, and make the bulbul our favourite cage-bird, instead of the canary.
THE PARIS ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS IN THE TWO SIEGES.
Here is an odd scene in the Jardin des Plantes at the end of April 1871. The communards were defending the ramparts, and a steady rain of shells had been pouring in from the Versaillist batteries for a week. Every one in Paris was “stale” from continued siege and bombardment. War had lost all its excitement, and nothing relieved its squalid discomfort. An order to impress all citizens for the National Guard had just been issued, and one of these, M. Henri de Goncourt, an author, a man of taste, and a man of peace, had wandered into the Jardin des Plantes, partly from sheer ennui, partly, as he would have us believe, in the hope that he might find an empty loose box of a deer or antelope, in which he could sleep, and escape the réquisition militaire of the omnipotent M. Pipe-en-Bois. He found a party of National Guards sauntering round the Gardens, conducted by a philosophical Republican, who halted his squad in front of the kangaroos’ cages, and gravely took for his text the maternal virtues of “Citoyenne” Kanguroo, begging them, “with emotion,” to observe the contrast of the animal, which always carried its infant in its pocket, with the indifference of “les femmes aristo” to their babies! The republican zeal for improving the occasion is typical of the frame of mind to which the average Parisian can always bring himself and his audience over any political or patriotic question, on the most trifling occasion, a kind of conscious insincerity which his hearers agree to share in order to enjoy the sentiment of the moment. But the time and occasion are not often so comical. The observer of the scene, M. de Goncourt, a writer steeped in the literary life of Paris, a life which the siege had starved and crushed, leaving the poor man in a state of acute mental starvation very curiously shown in his journal of the siege, declared that the animals which had survived the first siege, or had been introduced to the Gardens after the Prussian occupation, were almost as bored by the loss of their “public” as he was at the loss of his. “The animals,” he says, “are silent. The elephant, abandonné de son public, leaning indolently against the wall, was eating his hay with the air of a man compelled to dine alone.
In the first siege, the animals of the Paris Zoo which could by any means be classed as “game” or venison early found their way into the butchers’ and game-dealers’ shops. As early as October 3 two large stags were exposed for sale; at the same time big tame carps, which had adorned the fountains in the Gardens, were rubbing their purple noses against the sides of a baby’s bath, set upon the counter, and a young bear, freshly killed, its broad paws clenched in death, was hanging like a sheep from the hooks above, destined for auction by hungry Parisians on the following day. On the last night of the old year, in the shop of the butcher Roos, in the Boulevard Haussmann, far less appetizing viands were the subject of a sale, which for the moment was invested with an interest equal to that attending an auction of masterpieces of art at Christy’s. The last batch of animals from the Jardin d’Acclimatation was on offer, to supply the materials for a New Year’s dinner. The trunk of “Pollux,” a young elephant, was the central attraction, and among a number of unfamiliar heads and horns, a shopman was pointing to a pile of camel steaks.
The butcher was concluding his speech, in the centre of a circle of women—
“It is forty francs a pound, for the filet or the ribs. Yes—forty francs. Dear, you say? Not at all; I do not see my way to making a penny on it. I counted on 3000 lbs., and he (the elephant) has only cut up into 2300 lbs. The feet—you ask the price of the feet?—are twenty francs; the other portions eight francs to fourteen francs a pound. Allow me to recommend the elephant sausage; there is onion in my sausage, ladies and gentlemen!”