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.