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.



More

;