APPEAL OF ANIMALS

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 18 December 1926, Page 11

APPEAL OF ANIMALS

CONFIDENCE WITH HUMANS

<£lo many and various have been the tales told in recent asked, or have given help, and so retentive are memories of remote incidents, that it is safe 1o assume that the narrators delight in these animal histories. If so, they are not exceptional. All men, particularly the English, like to- apeak and hear of animals. No subject (produces more prompt response. What a great statesman said in such-an-such a year is nothing to the bark uttered by Fido the year before. The one is embalmed in history; the other rings for ever iif an affectionate owner’s ear. If foreigners accuse us of disproportionate sentiment, it was a French dramatist who laid his scene in a dog’s cemetery. This, though little of the dramatist’s sympathy was spent upon the dogs, must be weighed in the balance against the extraordinary response of English audiences to the appearance of animals on the stage (says the London Daily Telegraph). If the animals are performers, and have, as it were, a speaking paTt which suggests that some unkind human being may have trained them, there is a division of sentiment from stalls to gallery, but when the actor has nothing to do but wag his tail and walk off again, the audience, having no qualms of conscience, is enraptured. It must be a little embarrassing for the actors and actresses* tv ho have no tails to recommend them. The greatest of comedians may be playing to all the world’s delight, but the serving-maid has only to appear with a puppy at her heels to make everybody forget him. Even the favourites of the screen have to bow before this rivalry. Let the film star, tvho. is worshipped from Los Angeles to Leningrad, venture on a “close-up” with a bull-dog in her arms; it is not I to her that ecstatic millions will address their compliment when they murmur: “Oh. isn’t it too sweet!” The

sympathy is universal; no kind of animal is excluded from it. But. when at comes to a telling of animal stories, dogs, horses, and, eats, command a majority: dogs and horses because they are obviously friendly to man, and cats because all men are anxious lo know whether or not they are contemptuous of them. On this and upon all other doubtful points of animal psychology the volume of evidence is infinite and is conflict eternal. There, in the stable, the kennel, or by the fireside, is a mystery intimately concerned with ourselves which we shall never tire of attempting to solve. The problem that lies in tile cradle will speak for itself some day, but those that have four legs and a tail will always withhold, perhaps unwillingly, a thousand secrets from our imperfect understandings. Little wonder that, on rare occasions when Fido scorns to make a definite re- , mark about himself, his human confidant treasures the revelation, and passes it on. ’ :