Curiosities of natural history / by Francis T. Buckland.

  • Francis Trevelyan Buckland
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Curiosities of natural history / by Francis T. Buckland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    193/466 (page 141)
    can get out of her cage, on to his head, or on to the nearest corner of the table or floor ; then she stands at his feet, and commences the funniest succession of jerks and bows, cooing loudly and hoarsely all the time. After she came home from the North Pole, an officer of the ship happening to call a few weeks after she had been returned to her mistress, she manifested the utmost impatience to get out of the cage on only hearing his voice, and the moment she saw him she flew directly into the breast of his coat, where she had been accus- tomed to nestle in the homeward voyage. She was never scarcely in her cage on board ship, as she was too tame to fly away. Captain Inglefield took a large quantity of wheat and canary-seed and gravel with him on each voyage as the dove’s provision. Rats are terrible plagues on board ships ; there is an improvement upon the old plan of killing them by means of smoke. A rat is not so easily killed by stinking vapours, as remarked above. The new plan, as I have been told, is to take the infected ship alongside a steamer, and having stuffed up every crack and door and window, to introduce a leather hose ; steam is then forced down the hose into the ship ; the rats can’t stand this ; they get parboiled, and the cockroaches with them ; the ship is thus thoroughly freed from all its live stock. I have it on the authority of Captain Shipton, R.N., that in the American War it was no uncommon thing to get hold of a lot of coasting vessels, and in order to get rid of the trouble of them, after taking the crews out, the captors set fire to them, and then hundreds of rats were seen scudding up the rigging, not knowing which death was least disagreeable—drowning or burning. A friend who has travelled much tells me that when off the Cape of Good Hope a heavy sea struck the ship