‘CHIN ‘ - THE STORY OF A TAME CHINCHILLA By the Author of 'Friends in Fur and Feathers’ “For Exchange - A set of Chinchilla, nearly as good as new, and very handsome; cost twenty-five pounds. Wanted - A Spaniel with very long ears, thorough-bred and affectionate. Also, jeweler to the value of eight pounds; Indian ornaments in gold filigree preferred." An elderly lady sat, capped and spectacled, in her arm-chair, conning over the distracting contents of an exchange-paper! She has passed over with a languid interest bargains which twenty years ago would have roused her into a fervor of excitement, curiosity and acquisitiveness - gowns "never put on," to be had for less than half price; rare bits of old jeweler, to be exchanged for a " gipsy-ring" or anything else; a baby's caul, value five pounds, for half the amount in Brussels lace; a tame squirrel, which it was earnestly hoped might be turned into a 'Wedgwood tea-pot; violins, old china, skulls, bicycles. But none of these things interested her, or awoke even a passing wish for their possession. The very thought of skulls had given her a shiver, bicycles never could by any possibility "be anything to her" - and she was too far "behind the age in which she lived" to have given for a cracked jug (if she had had the money, which ~he had not) so that even old china, with all its powerand potency in the manufacture of maniacs, found no response in her:

but what was this?

" A set of Chinchilla "-" cost twenty-five pounds "-" and nearly as good as new And" wanted a Spaniel with very long ears,' and '-" jewellery and especially gold filigree!"
She fixed her spectacles more firmly upon her Roman nose, read it again and again, and then leaned back in a reverie. Chinchilla had been one of her life-long dreams. -As a child she had sat every Sunday in winter, through many a year, behind a long and capacious cape and muff of the gigantic proportions our grandmothers carried before them, and ever more she bad been haunted by the hope of Chinchilla. But in the manifold disappointment of a life time, that hope had ever been getting fainter, and she had long ago, resigned herself to the belief, that having arrived at sixty years of age, fate could have destined her to nothing nearer her dream of beauteous furs than her old squirrel-lined cloak. But now, all was within her reach. Again she read, and this time aloud: A Spaniel with very long ears, thorough-bred and affectionate. Fido was most affectionate, and Fido's ears were nineteen inches across, the coincidence was startling - and the temptation overwhelming, She had Fido, and she had filigree.
In the meantime the unconscious owner of the ears, poor dog! having lapped up his saucer of milk in a corner, came
with a "Thank you! " to his mistress, expressed with effusion and wagging tail and his wishful eyes fixed upon
her spectacles, He tried in vain to look his love through those obstructive glasses, and he little divined that his
affectionate nature was about bringing him into trouble, having been advertised for, and that in fact himself,
and his ears, and his feelings would all be worth-just so much fur!
He waited long and patiently for the word or caress which never came, and being aware at last that his mistress, as a superior being, was absorbed in a higher region than he could reach, and was therefore lost to him for a time, he lay down, putting his head flat on the floor between his outstretched paws, and with a sigh resigned himself to a depressed and dreamy sleep.
But a week or so went by before the deed was done; and then Fido and the filigree were at last packed off together, and a few days more, saw the old lady the delighted owner of their equivalent in - "real Chinchilla." As soon as she looked at her acquisition, but more especially when she put it on, she felt that life " was not all disappointment", and, whilst folding her hands for the first time in her muff, she glanced down at the luxuriously soft and beauteously-tinted fur on her cloak-border, she  was aware that she was a happier woman, and a woman on better terms with herself and all the world than she
had been at any time for the last forty years.
In the natural triumph of a successful bargain, Fido's owner had not thought much of Fido's feelings, so she could hardly be expected to remember that her cloak-border had also had its feelings; and was not quite the person to take the least interest in the fact that some fir (one and twenty little lives had been extinguished to fringe her garments)

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“CHIN” The story of a tame chinchilla

But who does think or such things? Who ever remembers that cuffs and muffs, and jacket-trimmings at so much per yard, have been living things ? happy little things nestling in rocky holes with their young in the short northern summers, hunger-driven little creatures, hunting the snows under the starlit sky of the long night of a northern winter, then trapped when their coats were at their best and winter-warm, to re-appear as muffs, and cuffs, and furbelows

Such is the story of most of our furs; but not of the Chinchilla, whose name tells where he came from; for he belongs to another sphere, to the New World, as the old discoverers called it, and to the grandest region of that world, the great mountain-chain which Is north and south through Chili and Peru.
The old lady's grey soft furs had not known the Arctic snows and stars, they had belonged to a tropical region, and only three years ago her cloak-border had scampering about in the Cordilleras.
The five and thirty little creatures who composed that flounce, were, when alive, exquisite to look and touch; and not wild and shy, as wild things are, but strangely gentle and easily captured; neither squirrel nor rabbit, but like them both and prettier than either.
They lived in a happy village community half-way towards the sky, where the aiguilles of the Cordilleras shot upwards through the air, while the depths below were blue distances of valley and precipice, sheer down to the plain of Chili, looking like a mere narrow ribald of land , with the great silver silence of the ocean beyond.

In those heights the magical clearness of the atmosphere seemed to annihilate distance, and the Condor ranging, poised, with huge white wings above a chasm a mile away, seemed as if a stone thrown by a child's hand might reach him, no sound broke the silence and the hushed mystery of that upland world, unless the great storm-winds awoke, or the thunder crashed in the fury of a tropical storm. Down below all was light and splendor, and bird and insect were as gorgeous as the flowers which opened their rare hues in the burning sunshine. Up above it was silent with the silence of the frozen North. The heights were swept by winds chilled from the sea, or iced by the snows of the higher peaks, and the little Chinchillas in their mountain home, although creatures of the tropics, needed all their depths of velvet-like fur to keep them from the cold. :

Their village was an old world settlement under the crags, burrowed out by Chinchilla-hands hundreds of years gone by; they were there, probably long before the Incas ruled in the land; they were there certainly while the Spaniards swept the country with fire and blood; and up the rocky ledges past their burrows, the gangs of miserable slaves, Inca princes and their people, must constantly have passed on their way to slavery and death in the mines above.
Whether the Indians who wore those feather-robes which were the wonder of all Europe, ever used the the exquisite fur of these little Chinchillas, does not appear from the accounts of the conquerors The first mention of the creature in European literature is in the writings of a Spanish Padre, who describes it as about the size of a squirrel, and marvelously soft and smooth.

Two years afterwards, an Englishman, Richard Hawkins, bas seen it also, and says “it is a delicate little animal, having fur the most curious he had ever seen." Half a century later, another Spanish writer thinks, from its large eyes and the clever use it makes of its hands, that it is a kind of squirrel; and a squirrel it remained for a hundred and thirty-six years, when the Abbe Molina, a native of Chili, a much closer observer and better naturalist than his pre-decessors, made another guess at its kinship, but no nearer the truth than theirs.
From its habits of burrowing and of living in large communities, the Abbe believed it to be a rat, and thereupon gave it the name of Mus Lanigerus, which specific name Lanigera it has ever since retained, although it has long since been removed from amongst the rats. The Abbe says that the Indians drive it from its holes with the "Qique" a kind of weasel, just as a ferret is used in bolting rabbit in England.

This Padre, who writes the natural history of his native country in the year 1782, seems to have had tame Chinchillas, and to have petted them, for he describes them very lovingly, and says they are so clean and scentless that they can be kept in houses without inconvenience, and adds that “they are naturally so gentle that they may be taken in the hand without attempting to bite or even trying to escape." He thinks they take pleasure in being “caressed, and when taken up"; and put upon any part of a person, he says with evident surprise, “They remain as quiet and unconcerned as if they were upon the ground”
Having placed his pets amongst the rats, there the Abbe left them, and there they remained for about forty years; classified at times by some observers, dubiously, amongst the Hamster rats, but evermore ignominiously declared to be rats.

Then came the new light upon remote affinities of race, thrown by the study of comparative anatomy, when the Chinchilla, having been taken in hand by Cuvier, was declared to be neither rat nor squirrel, but a porcupine.
The conformation of the delicate skull, the internal microscopic structure of the teeth, told his story, and the bones betrayed an affinity belied by its whole appearance, for nothing more unlike than this exquisite little creature to a fretful porcupine could well be imagined. And so it was that the softest and silkiest-skinned animal in the world was discovered to belong to the most prickly; and its style is therefore now Chinchilla Lanigera, given it by the Chilian Padlre, with the family name of Hystricidrae (Porcupine) added by Baron Cuvier, and confirmed by all the modern anatomists, who have killed and cut up a good many of the race in the cause of scientific curiosity, since the Baron's discovery.

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Two such intended victims I know of, bought for killing and dissection by a great (perhaps the greatest) authority upon their species, who escaped their fate so far as to be allowed to live out their little lives in peace; and when their turn came to be made into skeletons, they were probably far more interesting to their preserver  than when they were alive, for they do not seem to have repaid him by making themselves at all attractive.
The Chinchillas at the Zoological Gardens are also said to be as these were-stupid and sleepy; but the story of a tame Chinchilla which has been given me to tell, justifies all that the Abbe Molina said of the race.' A more winsome pet was never seen than this little creature, who, in spite of all his specific and scientific surnames, was known only in private life as Chin."

It was a chilly July evening, when a small packing-cage arrived in a Welsh home, and through bars wide enough apart to let a pretty little nose pns11 through, a soft grey creature was looking eagerly with its beautiful black eyes.
The chinchilla, who had been offered by the sailor nephew and declined, had for all that had arrived, and had travelled from Liverpool to Llanberis secured only by a string over his cage-door above and below. Remembering his tropical birth, and fearing that for all his fur be might be cold, a fire was ordered to be lit, and then dinner had to be thought of. But upon inquiry it was found he had already dined, and had eaten a whole cabbage-leaf given him on his arrival by a young girl, who, fancying he looked very much like a rabbit; thought he would like such solid and satisfying green food. And so he did at first sight, but he must have eaten in ignorance and found reason to repent of what he had done, for never again would he look at a cabbage ever so young or ever so tender.

He was a little creature, about the size of a small hand" with wonderful eyes, eyes larger in proportion to his size than I ever saw in any animal. "So his mistress says in her account of him. It was difficult to tell exactly how large he was in describing him, fur he had a power of elongating and making himself curiously tall when he stood up for dainties held almost out of his reach; but when he sat musing, as he often did, hunched almost into a ball, with his tail curled close to his side, be looked a mere mite. His pretty ears were large, rounded, and full of expression, semi- transparent, and something like those of a bat. But next to his wonderus eyes his whiskers were his greatest beauty; they were alternately white and black, spreading out like a fan, which graduated from tiny white down on his little nose, to the immense length of four and a half inches. These splendid whiskers quivered and trembled, and were as full of expression as the mobile ears and the pathetic black eyes; and the eyes, generally so superb and brilliant, had in them a strange mournful pathos, whenever the musing fit overcame little Chin.

As he got used to his new home, he became less vigilant and distrustful, and often lapsed into this pensive mood. A trance seemed to come over him suddenly, and then you might stoop over and kiss him without in the least disturbing him. His dream-land was confidently believed to be somewhere in the heights of Chimborazo, and that he was just then lost in a vision of himself happy in a burrow with all the other Chins, and far beyond the power of ever so kind a kiss to wake him.
But this day-dreaming only developed itself later in his story, for at first, and for a long time, he kept his great black eyes wide open, watchful of all who came near him, and his ears pricked up listening acutely, while his whiskers were in cea1ieless agitation.

He was not wild, from the very first, but he disliked being caught; and if a hand was put into the cage to take hold of him, he always pushed it away with the most fascinating petulance. He never had any fear of the face, and did not mind how much he was kissed, but always seemed to have some misgiving about being caught, so he was not often held; but when he was in anyone's hand, he deemed to be nothing but a ball of fur, for his bones could hardly be felt through the depth of fur-coat, the silken softness of which in his ancestors had so astonished the Spanish Padre two hundred years ago'. But Chin's coat was not by any means in perfect order when he arrived, for having sat much either for warmth or for company on the top of the stove in his master's cabin, he had scorched some of his fur off. He sat in that hot corner side by side with another poor captive and companion in trouble, a paraquet, who, pour passer le temps, had amused herself by constantly nibbling one of Chin’s bat's ears, and he must have approved of it and liked it upon the whole, for he sat quietly day after day to be nibbled and scratched, until his friend forgot herself, and with one hard bite took a piece out of his ear, and left poor Chin disfigured for life.

In Edinburgh he puzzled everyone who saw him as much as his Forbearers had done the Spanish Padre. Again he was likened to a rat, a rabbit, or a squirrel, but none seem to have divined the hedgehog under that silken skin and delicate form.
In the quickness of his movements, and especially in the clever use be made of his fore-paws, he was a perfect squirrel; but he was altogether a graver creature, with little of the wild spirits, and none of the love of fun aud espieglerie of a squirrel. Those dainty fore paws were very small, and curiously like a pair of little hands protruding out of a pair of fur cuffs. He held things with them, and made much use of them in washing his face, as cats and squirrels do but not in the licking and wiping way they manage the matter, for Chin always did it Arab fashion, with dry sand.

 It was long after he Came before it was found out that a sand-bath was essential to his welfare, but some one having heard that the Chinchillas were supplied with them at the zoological Gardens, a bath improvised out of a soup-plate, and filled with the finest and driest sand that could be procured, was placed in front his cage.His mistress says, “I shall not easily forget his first sight of the sand plate. He stood at his door, whiskers trembling for a moment with anticipation, then he jumped up to the plate, and then on to the sand, scratching it away with his little hands, throwing it over his head, and then lying on his side and rolling over and over so rapidly that we saw only the flash of his white waistcoat and the straighten of his short tail” - "From that time the daily bath was a great delight to him, and he seemed to enjoy it more and more “After a more than usually successful and exhilarating roll, he always sat up, and passed his little hand over his face, which always brought the house down”

Chin's bath became a popular performance, and a circle of his devoted adherents often sat round a table to see it come off. Sometimes the tickling of the san or perhaps the tickling with the sand was intended to allay, led, after that indescribable dainty passing of the hand over the face, to a prolonged scrubbing of it, not only with both hands but with both the little arms which were furred with those curious cuffs of his quite up to the elbow. “The quaintness and deliciousness of that performance, the energy with which the head was turned from side to side, and the conceit of the hop into the cage when it was all over, cannot be imagined by anybody who did not know this Chin."

Another favorite exhibition was to see Chin make his bed. Whenever he had fresh bay or straw given him, be set to work with feverish haste, in an earnest and rather agitated way, to cut every bit of it into regulation length. This done, the making of the bed began with a great routing, and burrowing, and picking out of superfluous quantities, and a nibbling and arranging of the remainder.

At his dullest (for even Chin had his ups and downs) one had only to hold a straw near his cage, and out he came to bite at it with a kind of savage energy, always nibbling it off in short lengths nearly up to the holders fingers, and when it got too small to repay further effort, "flinging it far away with that wonderful little hand"

Chin bad no doubt instincts of his own, besides family tradition, all on the side of a well-chopped bed, but probably his eagerness in biting up his straw was as much on account of his teeth as for the comfort of his pillows, for if his bedding had to be of regulation length, so, above all things, had his teeth.They had to be kept ground by hard work, and like those of all gnawing animals they would have gone on growing upwards and downwards, until having lost the chisel-like fit one upon the other of the upper and lower teeth, they would have been useless, and Chin upon his own finding must inevitably have been starved.The head of a poor rat whose teeth had grown and curved round into circles in this way, is somewhere preserved in London. Chin practiced his teeth from time to time upon anything that came in his way, and on board ship kept them in order upon his master's boots. When be first came, no one about him knew what all this gnawing meant, or understood that the long needle-like teeth required careful adjustment to prevent their becoming unmanageable.
The propensity seemed to come upon him at intervals very strongly. In one of those gnawing fits he put his work to some purpose, and chiselled out a back door for himself through his cage.
That night his mistress, who could not sleep, got up, and going into the room where the Chinchilla was, found it at large upon the table. More beautiful," as she says, than she bad ever seen him, his eyes shone that night with the joy of the wild life, and had lost the timidity of the caged and bunted creature" those pretty, wistful eyes so often wore.

It was night and he was free.

He was a nocturnal creature, all his instincts were alive, and the poor little captive in the triumph of that great success, his new back door, may have been thinking himself far on his way to the Cordilleras. Nobody knows or ever thinks how the miseries of captivity are enhanced in the case of all nocturnal creatures, by the complete upsetting of their habits. Chin's low spirits and day-dreams were probably partly from the distress caused by having to be awake and watchful when he ought to have been asleep, for as evening came on, he generally became fully alive and lost all symptoms of depression. His evenings were his happiest time; and although he had to take his gambols in a lamp and fire lit room, and would have much preferred being in the dark, he managed to make himself very happy and most amusing by his frolics, which evidently were meant for a painstaking rehearsal of Chinchilla life in the Cordillera. Chairs and tables, and people's shoulders, answered his purpose for a scampering ground, but it was found that he never in his most confident moods felt himself at ease unless he had places of shelter to run to, it was, of course, the instinct of a barrowing creature feeling shelter less above ground, and liking to be sure he had his holes within reach. So Chin was re-assured upon this head by always having his arbor a waste-paper basket poised in the edge of a china plate, as well as his house close at hand, to either of which he escaped at intervals in his wild frolics about the rooms, He would run at full speed across the arm-chair drawn to the fire- side, and along the shoulders of the occupants, sometimes burrowing down behind them, making imaginary holes and houses in the stuffing of the chair with great expenditure of muscular strength in kicking and scratchingHe often insisted upon burrowing between the buttons of a gown, and after great efforts would manage to push himself through an opening, and when he had nearly succeeded, al ways gave a final kick before going out of sight. The fierceness of his demonstration against the obstructive buttons was a most amusing thing to see.Now and then in one of his runs, when he came to the top of an arm-chair he would go off suddenly into a gentle doze for half an-hour or more, or upon a safe arrival upon somebody's shoulders, would often remain there, very still, as if he was quite contented and happy,  just as the Chinchillas described a hundred years ago by the Abbe Molina, who, he says, always remained upon a person wherever they were placed. Little Chin, when in an unusually gentle mood, would nestle himself close to the face and nibble the ear of a friend; It was simply a caress, but with his peculiarly-shaped and carefully-sharpened teeth, it was fortunate that he never forgot himself as his friend on board the steamer - the parquet - had done.

There were times when he was made supremely happy by permission to sit up longer and continue his

gambols half through the night over a very large bed, which afforded a rich and varied scenery in the way of

hill and plain.There were gallops along the dark valley behind the bolster, a clamber up to the pillows, or a

bound to the top of them, from whence, standing still, with one little hand held up and whiskers wildly

vibrating, Chin made a survey of the plainbelow. Then all being safe for a scamper, there was another rush

to the foot of the bed, and a swift return for further exploration of the hill-Country amongst the pillows. And

all this went on sometimes until one o'clock in the morning, when the mad-cap had to be caught and caged

to allow of his devoted, but un-nocturnal, friends going to sleep.

His memory was excellent: if a bonne-bourne had once been put in any very unusual place (on the top of
some one's head, for instance), and been discovered there by him in the course of a steeple-chase over
friends and furniture, he never forgot it, and was always sanguine about finding it there again. He had a
certain moral sense also, and often gave an admonition in the shape of a small bite with those needle-like
teeth, which, if he had used them in anger, would have instantly bitten to the bone.

When be was excited once by a game of straw-biting, be bit until the blood came, but there was neither a

moral nor any malice meant, it was only the merest misadventure. Although be bad never been really wild,

be was at first ever on the watch, and distrustful of his strange new surroundings, but he gradually grew

much more confident, and was soon sufficiently at home to enjoy himself immensely at times in some sort

of fashion.

His food was an ever-recurring difficulty, and a perplexity which was never cleared up.All the directions be

brought with him were, that until things that suited him could be discovered, be was to have a handful of

grass and a bit of bread; and as nothing whatever was known of his habits, in spite of all the experiments

made and all the trouble taken to give him what he seemed to like, he probably never bad any food which

properly nourished him, and suffered sadly in consequence.Besides his master's boots, he bad eaten a great

deal of orange and apple-peel on the voyage, and the nearest approach to a vegetable diet at hand; so no

wonder that on his arrival,, his first and last cabbage leaf presented to him as a desirable luxury.

He made one day a fortunate discovery for himself, His cage having been placed upon  a table where there

was a vase of flowers, be sallied out to explore, and standing up, smelt at a "China-rose which be instantly

nibbled off, and dashing away with it into the farthest recesses of his cage, ate it up most eagerly; then

throwing away the calyx with one of his pretty, disdainful gestures, he went out to fetch another flower.

From that time China-roses became a chief part of his food.

He was fond, too, of plantain, and it was “the most charming thing" to see him with one of the long stalks, managing it prettily and daintily in both little hands. If the plantain was held horizontally before his cage, be would come out, and putting one little paw upon the holder's hand, be would eat all the seeds close down to the thumb and finger that held it for him, and then take the stalk in his own hands and fling it far away. Carrot, dandelion-leaves, and ground-nuts, be also liked; and once, when he was at the Lakes, it was found be would eat groundsel eagerly. His China-roses were getting scarce, but be seemed just then quite satisfied 'With groundsel and a little carrot. However, upon his return to Edinburgh he bad decided to eat no more groundsel. His mistress's first walk had been to a nursery-garden in search of it, and whether Chin discovered a subtle difference between Scotch and English weeds, no one could possibly tell, but he would have none of it. It had been for some time his chief support, so his friends were thrown into fresh perplexity. However, his decisions were irrevocable; for, as his mistress says: “He had the fascinating quality of knowing his  own mind " and she adds most truly and feelingly, “We have no right to keep, as pets, creatures whose ways and habits we do not understand."

In early spring, the first green hawthorn-leaves  been one experiment which he had seemed to like, but in

spite of all that was done for him, the probability is, he was suffering the whole time for want of proper

food, and it is quite possible that some of his wild moods and apparently frolicsome fits were really from

pain and not from play. Fits of languor, which came on at times without any apparent cause, gave many

an alarm to his devoted friends. They would then take him out of his cage, and nurse him upon their laps by

the fire, and this always seemed to restore him; but poor Chin's little day was nearly over.

One summer evening he had been in an attack of this kind, and his mistress, feeling anxious about him, went

the next morning, as soon as she rose, to his cage; but one glance was enough - he was dying, and soon the

little grey furry ball stretched itself out in the sunshine, stiffened, and with one sharp cry, Chin was dead.
 

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A partial dissection in order to preserve the skin, showed how sadly the poor little thing must have suffered,

the disease that killed him, in all probability, being caused by want of the food and also of the medicine

which he would have found in the herbage of his native mountains. His life was to have been completed by

companionship, and matters were all arranged for the arrival of Chilla (for even her name was ready) but he

died just as his favourite China-roses began to bloom, and Just as Chilla was coming; and all that could be

done for him was to make his velvet soft skin into a sac for the sailor-nephew who brought him over, and to

tell, as his mistress says she hardly likes to tell, “how much of life's light-heartedness and cheeriness ended "

with him. But Chin bad been the first thing that awoke the feeling of cheerfulness under the crushing weight

of a life-long grief; and so he was well beloved by his friends for his own sake and for hers, who " in her

loving memoir of her pet, in despair of words doing justice to him and his pretty ways, (while sending his

photograph to give some idea of the marvelous eyes, and ears, and whiskers,) ends with a sentiment which

those who knew him best would all agree in – “ I don't know that anything that could be said of Chin could

ever give you an idea of his fascinations."

The end