Chapter IV: Part 4

ENGLISH poets, whenever they have condescended to take notice of the domestic fly, have done so from a favourable point of view. It is for them the sportive fly, the jocund fly, or, at worst, the giddy fly. This in itself will be a sufficient proof to future generations that the poets of our day did not suffer from the loss of their hair, for no bald-headed man would view the foibles of the fly indulgently. It must, therefore, be assumed as proved that the mental exercise of the elaboration of poetry causes a certain cerebral warmth which conduces to the growth of the hair; and this view of the case will receive an additional support should any portraits of Lord Tennyson be extant at the time when this investigation takes place. It is singular that, whereas bald-headed men have a marked and unanimous objection to flies, the latter have on their part a warm and effusive affection for bald-headed men. No philosopher has, so far as we know, attempted to explain the irresistible attraction which a bald head presents to a fly. It has been suggested, indeed, that, owing to its high polish and its capacity for reflecting light, it is assumed to be a luminous globe, and so exercises the same attraction to the fly as the globe of a gas light does to the nocturnal moth. A far more probable solution is that, as we know, the feet of flies are provided with suckers, and that as but few surfaces are sufficiently smooth for the perfect working of these machines, they view a bald head as a delightful place of exercise for them, and enjoy the fun exactly as the street boy enjoys the similar sport of attaching a leather sucker to the pavement and pulling at it with a string. The fact that poets view the vagaries of the fly with a mild indulgence will also, by our far-off descendants, be taken as a proof that the poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were well-paid and well-to-do persons, living in cool and shaded abodes; for undoubtedly, although the wealthy man who dwells in houses of this kind may view the fly with gentle tolerance, and even with amusement, such is not the light in which it is regarded in the dwellings of the poor. Indeed, it may be said that, with the exceptions named, the fly is invariably regarded as an unmitigated nuisance, rising in many countries to the dignity of a scourge.

In small numbers—in very small numbers—it may be admitted that the fly is, as Artemus Ward would have said, an “amoosing little cuss.” His restless, and apparently purposeless, circling and dancing in the air, the way in which he is perpetually charging any other of his species who flies near him, the earnestness and perseverance with which he brushes his many-lensed eyes with his forelegs, and arranges his wings, the gravity with which he inspects and tastes the sugar and other articles on the table, the confidence with which he treats all that is yours as his, and the pertinacity with which he insists on committing suicide in the milk jug—all these traits are amusing when you do not get too much of them.

The _raison d’être_ of the fly has not yet been discovered. Naturalists tell us that he belongs to the order of _Diptera_—that is, that he has but two wings—but they cannot tell us much more about him. The common house fly is provided only with a proboscis, somewhat resembling that of the elephant, with which he takes up moisture; but he has a cousin exactly resembling him, who when, relying upon this likeness, you allow him to settle on the back of the hand, neck, or other surface of flesh, instantly digs in a sharp lancet, which is capable of drawing blood. Happily, however, this treacherous cousin is comparatively rare, and none of the poets appear to have been familiar with him. But if in England it is still doubtful why the fly was created, there is no hesitation on that point in foreign countries. There the consensus of opinion is unanimous. The fly was made to try the patience of man. He was intended to make human life a burden by his buzzing, his settling, and his tickling, by the zeal he shows in rendering food uneatable, and by the cunning with which he circumvents all the efforts of man to interfere with his designs.

No one, indeed, can watch a fly engaged in the work of human torment without entertaining a suspicion that he is possessed of a certain diabolical instinct. So long as the man is wide awake, the fly will keep at a distance, unless, indeed, he sees that he is engaged in writing, and that his hands are ineffective for offensive purposes. The instant, however, that drowsiness steals over the subject, the fly, who has pretended to be taking no notice whatever of him, but to be engaged in a game of touch-as-touch-can with two or three of his comrades in the air, at once gives up his romps and takes to business. Choosing the most sensitive point he can find, he alights upon it, and begins to shuffle his feet about. A score of times he repeats this performance, generally selecting a fresh spot each time, and always evading any slaps aimed at him. It is remarkable that while at other times he flies noiselessly, he begins to buzz when he commences this game, so that even when he does not settle, he causes watchfulness and drives away sleep.

The fly who establishes himself in the kitchen enjoys higher delights than the flies who occupy other portions of the house. Cooks are notoriously an irritable genus, and the more irritable a victim, the more a fly enjoys tormenting him or her. Besides, cooks often have their hands full, and so are unable to defend themselves, and a fly always in preference attacks a person under these conditions. It is an admitted fact that flies possess a strong _esprit de corps_, and that they resent any interference with their ways. In a house where flies are undisturbed, they take good care not to be troublesome beyond a certain point. But if war is waged upon them, they are implacable. The foolish man who tries fly paper, whether of the sticky or poisonous sort, will soon regret having done so, for legions of flies assemble to revenge their slaughtered comrades. For every one slain a hundred put in their appearance, and madness is the probable result of perseverance in the crusade against them. The Egyptian woman is well aware of this, and will allow a hundred flies to settle undisturbed around her infant’s eyes, knowing that if she brushes them away worse will befall.

As autumn draws to its close, the fly changes his habits. He ceases to gambol in the air, for although his attacks upon human beings become more persistent and annoying than before, the quickness and the cunning are gone, and an obstinate, blundering stupidity has taken their place, and the fly in turn becomes the victim. If he escape this fate, upon finding death at hand he selects some spot where his demise will be particularly objectionable to the careful mistress of the house: a window, a looking-glass, a burnished ornament, or even a particularly white piece of wall-paper is chosen, and there he dies, a white fungus growing out of his body, and spreading to some distance around the spot where he has breathed his last. Whether this white fungus is the cause of his death, or whether his death is the cause of the white fungus, is still a point of dispute among the learned; the rest of mankind are contented to know that he is dead.

Unhappily, a certain proportion live over the winter, taking refuge in warm nooks and corners, and hibernating there. So seldom are they found, however, that it is a belief among the unlearned that the fly, like the swallow, is a migratory creature, and that upon the approach of cold weather he seeks warmer climes. It is urged, with a strong show of reason, how can all the vast number of flies destined to be the parents of the countless myriads in the following year hide away so as to escape detection? Scientific men have never attempted to grapple with the problem, but cover their ignorance by saying that as they are sure flies do not migrate, and as flies do reappear in the spring, it is self-evident they must hide away somewhere; and with this dictum the public must be content. Taken all in all, it must be admitted that the fly has a good time of it, and that his life is devoted solely to amusement, varied by feeding. Most other creatures labour hard for a not inconsiderable portion of their life in the preparation for and care of their young. The fly neither builds nests like the birds, nor lays up stores of food like the bees and wasps, nor pierces holes in wood like the beetles, nor spends half his time in the hunt for food like most quadrupeds. He assumes no responsibilities, for he has neither home nor family. Man places his food on tables for him, and builds mansions in which he can sport, untroubled by the weather. As the fly is found in every part of the known world, it must be assumed that he really has his uses, and that he possesses some latent virtue, edible or medicinal, which a future generation will, it may be hoped, discover and turn to account.

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THE PARROT.

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THE parrot is at once wise and amusing—a conjunction seldom observed in the human race. Under the general denomination of parrots are included several distinct species, varying from the great macaw to the tiny paroquet, having an exceeding wide range of distribution, being found in South America, Africa, and India, and the group of islands stretching down to Australia. Brilliant colouring is the most striking characteristic of the family, although there are some members, especially the parrot of Western Africa, that are almost Quaker-like in the quiet grey of their plumage. Next, perhaps, to their colour, their most notable characteristic is the extreme harshness of their voices, which are at once shriller, more discordant, and more agonising to the human ear than the sound uttered by any other of the animal creation, being approached only by the feminine voice when raised in anger. It is the more surprising that this should be so, since, as is evidenced by his nice powers of imitation, the parrot is endowed with a delicate ear, and there can be little doubt that the quality of his own voice, and of the voices of his wife, his family, and neighbours, must be a serious drawback to his happiness. Many parrots are gregarious in their habits, and the noise made by one of these flocks is prodigious. The shrill screams, the angry scoldings, and hoarse ejaculations create a din not altogether dissimilar to that which must have arisen from a city in ancient times when being sacked by a victorious soldiery. Among the smaller species, such as paroquets, every movement is marked by grace and agility. They are restless and playful, and very affectionate in their intercourse with each other. Attachment between husband and wife is very tender and lasting, and the death of one is generally followed speedily by that of its mate. We have less opportunity of observing the domestic relations of the larger parrots—the macaws and cockatoos—for few men are hardy enough to support the noise of more than one of these birds, and a scolding match between a cockatoo and his wife would be sufficiently discordant to empty even the largest house of all other inmates. It is singular that the tongue of this, the noisiest of birds, resembles more closely that of man than does the tongue of any other bird, being singularly thick and fleshy; it is doubtless due to this peculiarity that it is able to imitate the tones of the human voice so accurately as to defy discrimination.

While cheerfulness, sociability, and activity characterise the smaller parrots, the larger birds are marked by the striking variation of their moods. At times they will exhibit for hours an extreme restlessness, climbing up and down their perches, hanging head downwards, and indulging in a variety of strange antics. At others they will sit for long periods almost immovable, being distinguishable only from stuffed birds by the occasional droop over the eyeball of their white filmy eyelids. The mental characteristics of the larger parrots can hardly be termed agreeable, being marked by cynicism, malice, and a consciousness of superior wisdom. We do not say the assumption of superior wisdom, because no one can doubt its existence; and one of the problems which the human mind has failed to solve is what there is that the parrot doesn’t know. Diogenes in his tub could hardly have been wiser or more cynical than an elderly cockatoo; and a human being, when watching one of these birds, feels the same consciousness of youth and inexperience that David Copperfield always suffered from in the presence of the irreproachable Littimer, and that the traveller in Egypt experiences when gazing at the Sphinx. One cannot but feel that the parrot has, in addition to his inborn stock of wisdom, acquired a deep knowledge of human nature, as the result of years of careful study; that he has weighed man in the balance, and has come to the conclusion that he is altogether wanting. There is, too, the unpleasant feeling that the parrot has studied almost exclusively the worst side of human nature. The leer of his half-closed eye, the mocking laugh, the expression of malice in his tones, the hypocritical demeanour of friendliness until a finger approaches near enough to be seized—all this testifies sadly to the fact that the parrot has assimilated the worst qualities of man, while there is no sign that the better ones have made the slightest impression upon him. Of benevolence there is no trace, and, although capable of affection towards his mistress, he treats all other persons with equal nonchalance and contempt, although he may be cajoled into temporary familiarity by the offer of favourite food. The deep emphasis with which he mutters “Poor Polly,” shows the intense self-pity with which he views his forced habitation among such trivial and contemptible companions, and his regret at his own moral degeneration, the result of association with them. He knows that under happier circumstances he might have grown a respected patriarch in his native wilds, honoured, by those able to appreciate him, for his wisdom, and surrounded by respectful and admiring descendants, and it is the contrast between this and his present lot that has soured the bird’s temper and made him a cynic and a misanthrope.

Hardly less prominent a characteristic among parrots than cynicism is malice. The parrot delights openly and undisguisedly in giving annoyance. To seize the tail of a passing cat, or to awaken a sleeping dog with a sharp bite, affords him a delight over which he will laugh for hours. It is a pleasure to him to interrupt a quiet conversation with wild and sudden screams, and if by imitating a tradesman’s cry he can give a servant the trouble of going to the door, his malicious pleasure is unbounded.

The upper mandible of the beak of the parrot bears the same relation to that of other birds, as does the nose of the elephant to the similar feature among quadrupeds. Instead of being fixed to the skull, it is furnished with a separate bone, and is attached by a sort of natural hinge to it. He is thus able to open his mouth to a very wide extent, and to grasp a finger, a nut, or any other object with amazing force. In bestowing this faculty upon the parrot, Nature had an eye solely to the creature’s own benefit, and entirely disregarded the possible consequences to man. The foot, too, has an exceptional formation, giving the bird great power of grasp, enabling it at once to climb, to hang head downwards, or to hold its food while it devours it, with a power and facility almost unequalled among birds. It is not surprising that, with its power of imitating the human voice, and of modulating the natural harshness of its accents to the softest tones of that of a woman, with its human-like manner of taking its food, its close attention to everything that passes around it, and its evident wisdom, the parrot has from the oldest times been regarded with a certain superstitious respect by man. Ælian states that in India these birds were the favourite inmates of the palaces of the princes, and were regarded as objects of sacred reverence by the people. Among civilised nations this feeling has to some extent died out, but even now servant maids generally regard their mistresses’ parrots with dislike and aversion, being never quite sure that the parrot will not act the part of a tell-tale, and mention to its mistress that a shattered ornament was not really, as supposed, the work of the cat. The aversion is almost always mutual, a parrot very seldom admitting the slightest approach of familiarity on the part of a domestic, regarding her with the aversion which the dog manifests towards the tramp. Throughout the East the parrot has always been regarded as a bird possessed of mysterious knowledge and power, and frequently bears a prominent part in Arab legends. As a proof of the ingrained wickedness of the parrot’s nature, it need only be pointed out that it possesses a remarkable facility in acquiring bad language, and will pick up sailors’ oaths far more readily than it will acquire polite language. Upon the whole, although endowed with remarkable physical advantages, it must regretfully be owned that the parrot is a striking example of misapplied talent.

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THE COCKROACH.

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THE cockroach, the black-beetle of the London kitchen, is a creature that excites an amount of repulsion that cannot be accounted for or explained. There is nothing threatening in its appearance, as in that of some of the larvæ, notably the one popularly known as the “devil’s coach-horse.” It is unprovided with offensive weapons at either extremity; it can neither sting nor bite. It has not the habit of startling nervous persons by leaping suddenly upon them, as do the cricket and grasshopper. There is nothing about its figure that should be displeasing to the eye. It is, as far as man is concerned, absolutely harmless, and yet it certainly excites in the majority of persons a feeling of aversion approaching abhorrence, such as no other insect gives rise to. The cold light of reason fails to discover any ground for such a feeling, and it has been gravely adduced by some as a proof of the truth of the belief in the transmigration of souls; and that only upon the assumption that the souls of evil men are condemned to pass a portion of their future existence in the form of cockroaches, can the general antipathy to these creatures be accounted for.

There are many unsolved problems connected with the cockroach. Where does he come from, and especially where did he abide before man began to build houses? In this country, at any rate, he always takes up his abode in the habitation man provides for him. No one ever came across him in the fields or woods. It is in the house he lives and multiplies. He fears man and shuns his society, and yet appears to have a mysterious attraction to his abodes; the cricket only among insects, and the mouse and the rat among quadrupeds, share with the cockroach his partiality for human dwellings. But the cricket is but a domesticated grasshopper, the mouse has a country cousin, and the rat will take up his abode in many other localities. The cockroach alone is never found elsewhere, and has no relations in any way closely connected with him who are dwellers in the open air.

Next to man’s houses, the _blatta_, as he is scientifically called, loves his ships; but the variety that is found in vessels, especially in those trading with the East, is a larger, uglier, and in every way more repulsive creature than his English cousin. Once on board—and there is scarce a ship afloat into which he has not smuggled himself—he is there to stay, and short of sinking the vessel, or of fastening down the hatches and suffocating him with the fumes of sulphur, there is no way of getting rid of him. He multiplies with extraordinary rapidity, and his odour, when he is present in multitude, is so strong that in the hold many ships trading in hot countries it is almost overpowering. The flatness of his body enables him to crawl through every chink and crevice, and all efforts to keep him out of the cabins are unavailing. The ship variety has none of that fear of man that sends the kitchen cockroaches scuttling in every direction at the approach of a maid with a light. They will fearlessly perambulate his cabin, take up their posts on the deck-beams over his head, will watch him gravely with waving antennæ, and the moment they discover that he is asleep will run over his head and face, entangle themselves in his beard and hair, and gently nibble the skin on the tips of his fingers and toes.

The cockroach is an admirable judge of the weather. On board a ship the approach of a rain squall will bring them up from the hold into the cabins in tens of thousands; and in vessels where they abound they will blacken the ceiling, drop on to the tables, and drive nervous passengers for refuge to the deck. Whether the British variety is equally affected by the weather is a point at present undetermined, for as he does not emerge from his hiding places until the servants have gone upstairs and the lights are out, his habits have never been examined very closely.

The eccentricity in the movements of the cockroach has doubtless had a share in producing the feeling with which he is regarded. His ordinary pace is a fast though stealthy walk, but he is given to sudden pauses, remaining immovable, save for the constant waving of his long antennæ, which show that he is deep in the meditation of past sins or future wickedness. But when alarmed his speed is extraordinary: he is gone in an instant like a flash, and it needs no ordinary quickness of eye and action to bring the avenging foot down upon him. Even in his death he acts upon the human nerves, exploding with a sharp crack of so singularly thrilling a description that many even of those who most greatly dislike the cockroach cannot bring themselves to slay it.

It is on this account principally that nothing like an organised war is waged against the cockroach. Feeble efforts are made now and then to get rid of it by scattering beetle paste, and other supposed destroyers, about the kitchen, or by setting traps for it to walk into; but these measures, although effective to a certain point, make but small inroads upon its numbers, and it is only when it ascends the stairs and begins to pervade the house that serious attention is paid to it. There are men in London who make a livelihood by clearing houses, restaurants, and other dwellings, of cockroaches. Their methods are a secret, but they are certainly efficacious, and did the operators advertise their addresses they would be very largely patronised. Some have supposed that they charm the insects from their hiding-places by the sounds of sweet music; others that they possess a perfume which the cockroach cannot withstand, and that by it he is attracted to his death; while a few hold the belief that the insects are induced to leave their abodes by the use of cabalistic words.

The cockroach, like most of the order of orthoptera to which it belongs, retains the same form from the date it issues from the egg to its death. Familiar instances of this peculiarity are the earwig, locust, and grasshopper. The only difference between the first and second stage is that they do not become winged until arriving at maturity, the wings being then folded up under the leathery reticulated wing-case that distinguishes the order. It is rarely, indeed, that the cockroach uses the means of locomotion with which nature has provided it. It is possible that if it took to out-door exercise it would do so; but, passing its life as it does indoors, it has no occasion whatever for the use of its wings, and many people are even unaware that it is provided with them. The cockroach is not particular as to its food, and will devour almost anything that comes in its way. Crumbs of bread, fragments of fat or meat, sweets of all kinds, and indeed almost all food consumed by man, are welcome to it. It has a marked partiality for boot blacking, and is even able to digest leather. It will drink water, but its tendency is rather towards liquids of a sweet or intoxicating nature. Treacle or sugar in water attracts it, but it has a marked preference for beer, and traps for its ensnarement are generally baited with this liquor.

Unlike the cricket and the grasshopper, the cockroach is mute, at least so far as our ears are able to perceive, although it is certain that it can carry on long conversations with its own species, and two of them may often be seen standing head to head in close confabulation, enforcing their arguments with waves and flourishes of their antennæ. Entomologists may assign the _blatta_ a specific place among the orders and genera of insects in accordance with their characteristics, but morally they stand apart. They are the rats of the insect world, swarming out in their armies from dark recesses in search of garbage; no one, indeed, can doubt that, had they the power, they would not hesitate to follow the example of the rats on the Rhine, and to devour a bishop if he fell in their way. Other insects stand apart from them. The cricket may dwell in their midst, but he is not of them, while no observer has remarked a single case of friendship between the industrious bee, the impetuous and hardworking wasp, or, indeed, any other of what may be called respectable insects, with the cockroach—a strong proof that the creature is viewed with the same marked disfavour by the insect world that it excites in the breast of man.

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MICE.

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SINCE men and mice first became acquainted with each other, the mouse has been an enigma to the man. That it possesses strange and mysterious powers he is fully aware, although himself unaffected by them; and to this day neither naturalists nor philosophers have been able to account for, or explain, the abject terror with which the mouse is capable of inspiring the female mind. To the male eye, the mouse is one of the most harmless and inoffensive of created things. With its soft coat and its bright eye, there are few prettier little creatures. It is very easily tamed and domesticated; and most boys have, at some time or other, kept mice as pets. It is affectionate, intelligent, and capable of acquiring all sorts of tricks. It is afraid of man, but it rapidly acquires confidence in him, and after a very few visits it will, if undisturbed, fearlessly pick up crumbs close to the foot of any man who will sit still and watch it. Mice at play are as pretty as kittens, without any of the spitefulness which readily shows itself in even the youngest of the cat tribe. Were the mouse unknown in England, a few imported here would soon, it might be thought, be regarded as the most charming little pets ever introduced.

[++ Illustration: Mouse]

Such is the mouse as it appears to man. It is true that he is obliged to wage war with it, for it is so prolific that if man and its other enemies did not keep down its numbers it would, in a very short time, produce a famine in the land. It has most destructive habits of burrowing in walls, and eating holes in flooring and wainscots; while its depredations in stacks, granaries, and other similar places are serious. Thus man is forced in self-defence to war against mice; but he does it without ill-feeling, and would rather be able to leave the pretty little things alone. The last thing that would enter his mind would be to be afraid of them, and the terror with which they inspire women is to him absolutely unaccountable. In many respects women are to the full as brave and courageous as men. In the horrors of a shipwreck, in the dangers of a siege, in times of great peril, such as the Indian Mutiny, women have, over and over again, showed themselves to be at least equal to men in bravery, in calmness, and in endurance. But the woman who would, pale but firm, face a lion in an arena, will fly in terror from a mouse; and many a moment of sweet revenge and triumph has been felt by men with spouses of strong minds and shrewish tongues, when they have seen them paralysed with terror by a tiny mouse.

History records no example of a mouse attacking a man, and, when tamed, they never use their teeth. They have no powers of scratching; they cannot assume a threatening aspect; they neither show their teeth, growl, nor spit; they cannot stick up their furs as can a cat; they are, in fact, absolutely without means of aggression, and yet women quail before them. Man has wearied himself with conjectures as to this phenomenon. The Greek and Roman philosophers were posed by it, and the saying, _parturiunt montes, nascitur ridiculus mus_, which has ignorantly been supposed to signify that a small matter was produced after great labour, has, when critically examined, an entirely different and far more profound meaning. The philosopher clearly desired to signify that it needed the labour of mountains to produce a creature capable of awing the female mind. In the Greek fable of the Lion and the Mouse, the same feeling of respect and appreciation for the smaller animal is clearly shown. Some have gone so far as to trace back the enmity between the female and the mouse to the earliest times, and the argument has been advanced that the word translated as serpent, in the account of the Fall of Man, really signified mouse, an explanation which alone seems to satisfy the exigencies of the case.

This hypothesis is greatly strengthened by the fact that the mouse does go on its belly; alone among quadrupeds its feet cannot be seen to move, and it apparently glides along on its stomach. Then, again, its head, and, indeed, its whole body, is very frequently bruised, and, in fact, crushed by the human heel, and for every serpent upon which this process is performed it is done a hundred thousand times upon mice. The mouse does not, it is true, in return bruise the heel of its bruiser; but neither does the serpent, so that this objection applies equally in both cases—indeed, a tight shoe is the only article which habitually bruises or raises blisters upon the human heel. This is no novel idea, for in some old paintings the tempter is pictured in the form of a mouse sitting on Eve’s shoulder, and whispering in her ear. That the Jews entertained a feeling of abhorrence for the mouse far above anything that can be accounted for by natural causes, is proved by the fact that Isaiah lxvi. 17 says, “Eating the abomination, and the mouse.” These facts, coupled with the abject terror inspired by the mouse in the female mind, are really worthy of the attention of divines, who cannot fail to notice that whereas the creature, translated serpent, is said to be more subtle than any other beast of the field, the word cunning, which is synonymous with subtle, is still essentially applied to the mouse; while—putting aside the fact that the snake is not a beast at all—no modern investigator has ever claimed any particular amount of cunning for the serpent.

The terror with which women regard the mouse finds expression in various unlooked-for ways. Man has no peculiar liking for his nether integuments, as is evidenced by the eagerness with which cockney sportsmen, who go North, don the Highland garb instead of trousers, and by the popularity among the young fellows who constitute the Scottish Volunteers, of the ordinance which transformed the whole regiment into a “kilted” corps. Among women, however, movements are constantly taking place for the adoption of male lower garments. Sometimes these are spoken of as bloomers, sometimes as knickerbockers, sometimes as divided skirts. The advocates of these garments base their arguments on the ground of health and convenience; but men, who go beneath the surface, are well aware that these are but pretexts, and that the real reason why women desire masculine garb is that they may the better protect their lower limbs from the onslaught of the marauding mouse. No one who has ever seen a woman stand on a chair and wrap her garments tightly round her ankles upon the alarm of “mouse,” can question how keen is the consciousness among the sex of the possibilities of attack by their formidable opponents offered by the present style of clothing. It cannot be pretended that it is the mere fear of being bitten which so unhinges the female nerves where mice are concerned, for there are women who make parrots their pets, although parrots sometimes bite atrociously, and are singularly treacherous withal. There are others who pet spiteful cats, and snappish lap-dogs, and whom neither scratches nor occasional bites at all discompose. It cannot, therefore, be argued that any fear of pain is at the bottom of their antipathy for mice. The mere fact that here and there women can be found who profess not to be afraid of mice in no way affects the general truth of the argument. There are women who are not afraid of cows; who will not jump up in an open boat if it rocks; who are not fond of babies; who do not care for kissing their female friends in public. There are even women who will dress as they please, and not as their dressmakers tell them. But these are the exceptions which prove rules, and the almost universal fear of mice by women can be accounted for only upon the hypothesis of which we have above made mention.

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CATS.

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THE cat is generally considered to be a domesticated animal, but it would be more justly described as a gregarious one. No one who sees the placid and indifferent air with which the cat conducts itself when within doors, and compares it with the wild rapture with which the creature lifts up its voice when assembled with five or six of its species upon the end of a garden wall, can question for an instant that the cat is above all things gregarious in its instincts. That domestication is alien to the feline nature is proved also by the fact that there are no recorded instances of lions, tigers, or even the wild cats of these islands, walking into a parlour and lying down upon the hearthrug of their own accord. In the case of the wild cat it may be urged that such an advance on its part would not be welcome, but assuredly no opposition would be offered to the lion or tiger who might yearn to domesticate itself in this manner. The extreme repugnance which the feline race in their wild state evince for fire is another proof of the absence of any domestic yearnings in their breasts, for fire is the emblem of domesticity. The cat, then, has clearly assumed domesticated habits under protest, and as against its innermost nature; but it must be admitted that the imputation of hypocrisy, which has been freely brought against the animal, is hardly justified. The cat, to do it justice, pretends to no fondness whatever for those who care for it. It will submit to be rubbed and stroked, and to be placed upon ladies’ laps, simply because it likes these attentions, not because it is grateful to those who render them. It will rub against a human leg, but will also rub against the leg of a table with an equal air of affection. It will not answer when called unless there be a prospect of food, but will gaze in stolid indifference at the fire, as if wholly unconscious of being addressed. This absence of affection in cats is in itself an argument against the Darwinian theory. Since the days of ancient Egypt, cats have been pets. Ladies have—in the absence of better subjects for affection—doted upon them from time immemorial; but in all these countless generations the cats have not been able to get up a reciprocal feeling. Friends of the species have endeavoured to urge in its favour that it is affectionate to its young. If, however, five out of six kittens are removed and drowned, the mother in no way concerns or troubles herself. She certainly will look sharp after the last, but this only shows that she likes to have something to nurse and play with. Had she had a particle of real love for her offspring, she would have cared for all alike.

An intense devotion to public assemblies of its kind upon housetops and walls, and to the raising of music, Wagnerian in its absence of melody, are the special characteristics of the cat. To gratify its passion for concerted music it will dare every danger. Showers of lumps of coal, of boots and brushes, cause but a momentary interruption of its song; and even wet weather, which of all things it most hates, will not suffice to damp its ardour. It can hardly be doubted that cats are well aware that their gatherings for vocal purposes are hateful to mankind; but this knowledge in no way affects them, and even the voice of the mistress, who an hour before bestowed bread and milk, is absolutely unheeded when raised in an agonised appeal for silence. The predatory instinct is strong in these creatures, and however well a cat be fed or treated, it remains a thief to the end of its life. It is believed by those best acquainted with them that the greater portion of the time spent by a cat sitting in a state of apparent somnolency on the hearthrug, is really occupied in maturing plans for the surreptitious carrying off of pats of butter, for raids upon the larder, or for the assassination of canary birds.

The question why the cat should of all creatures be selected by ladies as a domestic pet has occasioned high debate among philosophers of all ages. The animal possesses many vices. It is erratic in its habits, noisy, and thievish. It has no real affection for its mistress. It has but one virtue—it is soft, but many other things are soft which are free from drawbacks. Some have pretended to see a resemblance between the natures of the cat and the woman, but no sufficiently strong analogy can be traced to support so libellous an assertion. The fact that both love the fireside and hate going out into the wet, and that it is dangerous to rub either the wrong way, can scarcely be considered as of sufficient importance to warrant the suggestion of general similarity. The feeble plea that cats catch mice cannot be admitted as an argument in favour of their general acceptance. There are not mice to catch in a great many houses, and it is notorious that where there are, not one cat in fifty will trouble itself to catch them. The cat who can get milk given it in a saucer is not going to trouble itself by catching mice; and the knowledge that it is expected to pay for its board by keeping down mice troubles it not at all. Even as a mouse-catcher the cat is a poor creature—taking half an hour over a job which a terrier of the same size will perform in a second.

It has been urged that without cats there could be no cat shows, and this may be conceded frankly, but mankind might get on without these exhibitions. Were cats unobjectionable in their ways, the onus of proving why they should be abolished would rest with those who do not keep them; but as they are most objectionable, owing to the torture of nerves caused by their midnight assemblages, to say nothing of their destructiveness to well-kept gardens, it is for those who own them to prove that there is some compensation, some good quality, some advantage arising from the keeping of pets which are a pest and an annoyance to neighbours. A man is not allowed to hire an organ or a German band to play in front of his house, even in the day time, if a neighbour object; why, then, should he be allowed to keep a creature which renders night hideous with its caterwaulings? The legislation which taxes man’s faithful friend and companion, the dog, allows his wife to keep two or three cats, and to populate the whole of the district with their progeny, if she choose to do so. Over and over again has the desirability of placing a tax upon these animals been pressed upon successive Chancellors of the Exchequer, but they have hitherto turned deaf ears to the suggestion; and the reason is clear: Chancellors of the Exchequer are but mortal, and have wives. No man having a wife would venture to propose a tax upon cats, and until we have a minister who is without either a wife or other female relations, sisters, aunts, or cousins, the cat will remain master of the situation.

And yet we are not altogether without hope. The present is essentially an age of association. There are Salvation Armies, Blue Ribbon Armies, Good Templars, Vegetarians, and Anti-tobacconists. Every one is interested in the well-doing of every one else. It cannot be doubted that sooner or later there will be an Association for the Suppression of Bad Language, and the very first step which such a body must take would be the suppression of the cat nuisance. It is calculated that at least 90 per cent. of those who have fallen into the lamentable habit of using strong expressions have been driven thereto, in the first place, by the voice of the midnight cat; and a pious divine has gone so far as to admit that at least mental profanity is absolutely universal, even among the best of men, under these circumstances. Even ladies of irreproachable morals and conduct have admitted the use of mental bad language, under the irritation caused by hours of sleeplessness through the infliction of a concert on the tiles. A society which would take the matter in hand would command an enormous support, although the great proportion of the subscriptions and donations in furtherance of its object would be anonymous, for few men would venture upon an open adherence to a society which, as a first step towards the suppression of swearing, would undertake to put down the domestic cat.

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THE LADYBIRD.

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THE ladybird occupies among insects a position very similar to that held by the robin among birds, and is similarly protected by a feeling akin to superstition. It must be owned that the robin has no peculiar claims upon the affection of man, on the grounds of benefits bestowed. It sings prettily, but there are many birds which surpass it in this respect; it has a friendly confidence in man, but not more so than has the sparrow; it can scarcely be considered to hold very high rank among the birds that render man vital services by acting as exterminators of the pests of the fields and gardens, and, indeed, it takes an ample toll of seed and fruit for any service it may do in the way of destroying insects. The jay’s bright feathers do not afford it protection from the keeper’s gun, and the patch of red on the breast of the robin would scarcely in itself account for the general feeling in its favour. Nor would the pretty markings on the back of the ladybird, for there are many more brilliant and showy insects; and the affection and kindly treatment which it receives, even from children, can hardly be explained, save as an instinct implanted by nature in the human breast, as a protection for one of his greatest friends and allies. Next, perhaps, to the ichneumon, the ladybird is the most valuable of all insects to man. The bee furnishes him with wax and honey, the silkworm with a fabric for the adornment of his female kind, the cochineal insect with a dye, the locust with a food, this being, however, but a poor return for its destruction of vegetation. The worm acts as a subsoil plough, takes down dead leaves and herbage, and brings fresh soil to the surface; many beetles work as scavengers, the Spanish fly provides us with blisters, and, indeed, it may be accepted that the great majority of insects are, in one way or another, directly or indirectly of benefit to man. But it may be doubted if any, save only the ichneumon, can vie with the ladybird in this respect. Its life is spent in the pursuit and destruction of the aphis, which, were it not for its vigilance, would so increase that it would become, in temperate climates, as great a scourge as is the locust in the localities it inhabits. Not only does the ladybird as a perfect insect live upon the aphis, but in its earlier, though less known, stage it is equally destructive to them, and from the time when it issues from the egg to its death its whole life is passed in the destruction of these pests of the farmer and gardener. In its labours this way it is ably assisted by the larvæ of the Hemerobius, which, in its perfect state, is a brilliant four-winged fly; and by those of the Syrphidæ, which transfix and devour their thousands on their trident-like mandibles. But these creatures, useful as they are, are far less common than the ladybirds, which are to be found on every plant, and, being amongst the earliest insects to make their appearance in the spring, are ready to meet the first invasion of the aphis. It may frankly be admitted that the ladybird is not, in this work of destruction, animated solely by a desire to benefit man, and even that this is quite a secondary matter in its opinion. This, however, may be said of many other recognised benefactors of man. The bullock is considered none the less a benefactor because he eats, not with the express purpose of making flesh, but to gratify his appetite; while the sheep values his warm coat rather because it keeps out the cold than because it will some day furnish man with a garment.

There are a great variety of ladybirds, differing only in the colours and markings of their coats; these are for the most part red, black, or yellow, with black, yellow, or white spots. The red with seven black spots is the most common, and is found all over Europe and in parts of Asia and Africa. It is everywhere a favourite with children, and in France they are called _Vaches à Dieu_ or _Bêtes de la Vierge_, and are considered sacred to the Virgin. Why this should be so is not very clear, but it would be much more easy to find explanations for the title than for the verses that especially endear them to children throughout this country—

“Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home,
Your house is on fire, your children alone.”

There are two or three versions of the last two words, but all alike express that there is danger to the children as well as to the house. The antiquity of this legend is prodigious; it is one of the group brought by the earliest arrivals in Europe from the Far East, and there can be little doubt that it came to us from Scandinavia. It is familiar to children, with but slight variation, all over Europe, and African children repeat an almost identical sentence over the ladybird. As the legends current in Europe and Asia are but seldom found among the sons of Ham, it does not seem by any means beyond the bounds of probability that the legend was in existence before the Flood, and that the children of the sons of Noah carried it to the various quarters of the world when they scattered from the common centre.

But, though there can be no dispute as to the enormous antiquity of these apparently non-sensible lines, scientific men, although agreeing that there must be a deep and hidden meaning somewhere, are quite unable to arrive at any consensus as to what that meaning can be. As of late years it has been the habit of scientific men, whenever they cannot find any other satisfactory explanation of an ancient legend or story, to assign it to one of the sun myths, “Ladybird, ladybird,” must now be considered as included in that broad category, and so takes its place by the side of the siege of Troy, the wars of the Gods with the Titans, and other apparently widely diverse legends. The highest credit is due to scientific men for the ingenuity shown in the invention of this sun-myth limbo, into which they are able to shunt away all legends and traditions that prove too tough for them to unravel. But, failing to grapple with the story of the burning of the ladybird’s house, it would certainly be satisfactory if we could get with certainty at the legend that connects them with the Virgin. The French call them _Bêtes de la Vierge_, the German _Unser Herrenhuhn_, while our own ladybird, which is, of course, a mere shortening of “Our Lady’s bird,” is a literal translation of the German name, the French differing only in calling the insect a beast, while the Germans and ourselves call it a bird. The most plausible supposition is that as the Virgin is in many Catholic pictures depicted as pierced to the heart with seven swords, the seven black spots on the red ladybird are considered as typical of those wounds, the form of the little creature being not unlike that of a heart.

Seeing the extreme value of the ladybird’s assistance as a destroyer of the green fly, it has more than once been seriously proposed to introduce breeding establishments for its multiplication; and there can be no doubt, were this practicable, agriculturists, and especially hop-growers, whose bines are cruelly ravaged by the green fly, would benefit vastly. The silkworm is bred in enormous quantities, and there seems no reason why the ladybird should be less susceptible of cultivation, if it could but be taught to lay aside its habits of restlessness. Unfortunately, the ladybird is a frequent and rapid traveller, and the hop-grower would have no assurance that his neighbour’s gardens would not benefit more than his own by his labours in breeding it. Few beetles take so readily to the wing; it runs fast, too, on the little legs packed so snugly away under the flat side of its hemisphere. Still, as the flea can be taught not to jump, it ought to be possible to restrain the ladybird from flying; and, in that case, if kept amply supplied with its favourite food, it might be content to breed in captivity, and the management of such an establishment would be a source of great interest and amusement to children. Owing, perhaps, to its immunity from cruel treatment at the hands of man, the ladybird exhibits no fear whatever of him. While the spider will rush to a hiding-place, the caterpillar drop itself from a twig, and the flea endeavour to escape by the aid of its prodigious activity from the touch of man, the ladybird will run unconcernedly across his hand, and, indeed, appears to take a pleasure in so doing, until, tired of the amusement, it opens its wing-cases, and, after a preliminary flourish of its wings, goes off in a swift flight in search of its next meal. Properly trained, the ladybird ought to be a skilful performer of tricks, although we are not aware that any efforts have been made in that direction, but a regiment of them drilled as soldiers and taught to manœuvre accurately to the sound of the bugle should certainly be an attractive spectacle.

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THE DOG.

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