RECOGNITION BY ANIMALS OF PICTURES.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] Sin,—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 the (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.--I am, Sir, &c.,
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