Recognition By Animals Of Pictures
[Sept. 7, 1889.]
Thirty years ago I was staying at Langley, near Chippenham, with a lady
who was working a large screen, on which she depicted in "raised" work
(as it was then called) a life-sized cat on a cushion. The host, a
sportsman now dead, was much struck with the similarity to life of the
cat, so he fetched his dog (alas! like too many of the species), a
cat-hater. The animal made a dead set at th
(wool) cat, and but for the
master's vigorous clutching him by the collar, the cushion would have
been torn into atoms. I related this tale lately in Oxford, and my
hearer told me that a friend in the Bevington Road had just painted a
bird on a fire-screen, and her cat flew at it.
My own old dog, Scaramouch (a pet of the Duke of Albany's in his
undergraduate days), disliked being washed, and when I showed him a
large Graphic picture of a child scrubbing a fox-terrier in a tub, he
turned his head away ruefully, and would not look at his brother in
adversity.
J. M. HULBERT.