ANIMAL CONFIDENCES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19965, 6 December 1926, Page 2

ANIMAL CONFIDENCES.

DELIGHT IN HISTORIES. TREASURED REVELATIONS. So many and various have been the tales told in recent letters o£ occasions on which animals have asked, or have given help, and so retentive are memories of remote incidents, that it is safe to assume that the narrators delight in these animal histories. If so, they are not exceptional. All men, particularly the English, like to speak and hear of animals. No subject produces more prompt response. What a great statesman said in such-and-such a year is nothing to the bark uttered by Fido the year before. The one is embalmed in nistory; the other rings for ever in 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 part which suggests that some unkind human being may have trained them, there is a division ot 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 who 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. Lot the film star, who is worshipped from Los Angeles to Leningrad, venture on a “-close-up ” with a bulldog in her arms; it is not 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 it comes to a telling of animal stories, dogs, horses, and cats command a majority; dogs and horses because they are obviously friendly to man, and cats because all men are anxious to know whether or not thew 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 the cradle will speak for itself some day but those that have four legs and a tail will aways withhold, perhaps unwillingly, a thousand secrets from our imperfect understandings. Little wonder that, on rare occasions when Fido seems to make a definite remark about himself, his human confidant treasures the revelation, and passes it on.