Which showed that there was more sense in Corkey minimus than you might have thought. The Piebald Rat It was all the result of old Briggs asking the Doctor if he might “instil the lads with a wholesome fondness for natural history.” That’s how he put it, because I heard him; and the Doctor said it was an admirable notion, and would very probably keep some boys out of mischief on half-holidays. It also kept some boys out of bounds on half-holidays; and after a time I think the Doctor was pretty savage with old Briggs, and wished he’d stuck to his regular work, which was writing and drawing and such like; because, when one or two of the chaps really got keen about natural history, and even chucked cricket for butterflies and beetles, others, who didn’t care a straw about it, pretended they did to gain their own ends. And it was these chaps, if you understand, who finally made the Doctor so sick with natural history generally and old Briggs for starting it. My chum, West, began the rage for study of “our humble relations,” as old Briggs called everything down to wood-lice. He let it be generally known that he had two live lizards in his desk; and, this being the best thing that West had ever thought of, the idea caught on well. I had a dormouse myself, my name being Ashby minor, and Ashby major kept a spider pretty nearly as big as a young bird, which he had poked out of a hole in the playground wall. He caged it in a tin match-box, and fed it with blue-bottles and wasps. At least, he got blue-bottles and wasps for it, but the fool wouldn’t eat them; and after a week he found it with its legs all tucked up as neatly as anything. Only it was dead. I thought the match-box must have been too tight a fit for it, but Ashby major did not. He believed there was something about a tin match-box which must be rather poisonous for out-door spiders. Then chaps went on collecting till it got to be swagger to keep big live things in your desk; and the bigger the thing the more swagger it was.