Heads and tales
PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY EDINBURGH AND LONDON Second Edition. LONDON: JAMES NISBET & CO., 21 BERNERS STREET. MDCCCLXX.
The Tasmanian Wolf. Thylacinus Cynocephalus.
In this work, a part of which is, so far as it extends, a careful compilation from an extensive series of books, the great order mammalia, or, rather, a few of its subjects, is treated anecdotically. The connexion of certain animals with man, and the readiness with which man can subdue even the largest of the mammalia, are very curious subjects of thought. The dog and horse are our special friends and associates; they seem to understand us, and we get very much attached to them. The cat or the cow, again, possess a different degree of attachment, and have heads and hearts less susceptible of this education than the first mentioned. The anecdotes in this book will clearly show facts of this nature. In the Letter of the Gorilla, under an appearance of exaggeration, will be found many facts of its history. We have a strong belief that natural history, written as White of Selborne did his Letter of Timothy the Tortoise, would be very enticing and interesting to young people. To make birds and other animals relate their stories has been done sometimes, and generally with success. There are anecdotes hinging, however, on animals which have more to do with man than the other mammals referred to in the little story. These stories we have felt to be very interesting when they occur in biographies of great men. Cowper and his Hares, Huygens and his Sparrow, are tales—at least the former—full of interesting matter on the history of the lower animal, but are of most value as showing the influence on the man who amused himself by taming them. We like to know that the great Duke, after getting down from his horse Copenhagen, which carried him through the whole battle of Waterloo, clapped him on the neck, when the war-charger kicked out, as if untired.
We could have added greatly to this book, especially in the part of jests, puns, or cases of double entendre . The few selected may suffice. The so-called conversations of the Ettrick Shepherd are full of matter of this kind, treated by Christopher North with a happy combination of rare power of description and apt exaggeration of detail, often highly amusing. One or two instances are given here, such as the Fox-hunt and the Whale. The intention of this book is primarily to be amusing; but it will be strange if it do not instruct as well. There is much in it that is true of the habits of mammalia. These, with birds, are likely to interest young people generally, more than anecdotes of members of orders like fish, insects, or molluscs, lower in the scale, though often possessing marvellous instincts, the accounts of which form intensely interesting reading to those who are fond of seeing or hearing of the works of the Lord, and who take pleasure in them.
Unknown
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HEADS AND TALES;
OR,
ADAM WHITE,
LATE ASSISTANT IN THE ZOOLOGICAL DEPARTMENT, BRITISH MUSEUM.
Thomas Gainsborough the Artist, and the Tailor.
Sir David Wilkie and the Baby.
Man Defined Somewhat in the Linnæan Manner.
Addison and Steele on some of the Peculiarities of the Natural History Collectors of the day.
The Gorilla and its Story.
Mr Mitchell on a Young Chimpanzee.
Lady Anne Barnard pleads for the Baboons.
S. Bisset and his Trained Monkeys.
Lord Byron's Pets.
The Ettrick Shepherd's Monkey.
The Findhorn Fisherman and the Monkey.
The French Marquis and his Monkey.
The Mandrill and George the Fourth.
The Young Lady's Pet Monkey and her Parrot.
Monkeys Poor Relations.
Captain Cook's Sailor and His Description of a Fox-Bat.
Dr Mayerne and His Balsam of Bats.
Southey and his Critics.
The Mole and King William.
Byron's Bear at Cambridge.
Charles Dickens on Bears' Grease and its Producers.
A Bearable Pun.
Shaved Bear.
The Polar Bear.
Nelson and the Polar Bear.
A Clever Polar Bear.
Captain Ommaney and the Polar Bear.
Hugh Miller and the Badger-Baiting in the Canongate.
The Laird of Balnamoon and the Brock.
Bishop Blomfield bitten by a Dog.
"Puppies never See till they are Nine Days Old."
Mrs Elizabeth Barrett Browning's dog Flush.
Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Bart., and his dog "Speaker."
Lord Byron and his dog Boatswain.
The Soldier and the Mastiff.
Bark and Bite.
The Difference of Exchange.—"Dog-cheap."
Gainsborough and his Wife and their Dogs.
Sir William Gell's Dog.
Elizabeth, the last Duchess of Gordon, and the Wolf-dog Kaiser.
Frederick the Great and his Italian Greyhounds.
The Dog and the French Murderers. (an occurrence in the spring of 1837.)
Robert Hall and the Dog.
A Queen and her Lap-dog.
The Clever Dog that belonged to the Hunters of Polmood.
The Irish Clergyman and the Dogs.
Washington Irving and the Dog.
Douglas Jerrold and his Dog.
Sheridan and the Dog.
Charles Lamb and his Dog.
French Dogs, time of Louis XI.—History of his dog "Relais" by Louis XII.
Martin Luther observes a Dog at Lintz.
The Poor Dog at the Grotta del Cane.
Dog, a Postman and Carrier.
Dog-matic.
General Moreau and his Greyhound.
A Duke of Norfolk and his Spaniels.
Lord North and the Dog.
Perthes derives Hints From his Dog.
Peter the Great and his favourite dog Lisette.
The Light Company's Poodle and Sir F. Ponsonby.
Admiral Rodney and his dog Loup.
Ruddiman and his dog Rascal.
Sheridan on the Dog-Tax.
Sydney Smith's "Newfoundland Dog that breakfasted on Parish Boys."
Southey on Dogs.
Dog, a Good Judge of Elocution.
Horace Walpole's pet dog Rosette.
Arrival of Tonton, a pet dog, to Walpole.—Tonton does not understand English.
Horace Walpole.—Death of his dog Tonton.
Archbishop Whately and his Dogs.
Sir David Wilkie could not see a Pun.—"A Dog-Rose."
Ulysses and his Dog.
Polson and the last Scottish Wolf.
Fox-Hunting.
Jackal and Tiger.
Jeremy Bentham and his pet Cat "Sir John Langborn."
Bisset and his Musical Cats.
Constant, Chateaubriand, and the Cat.
Liston the Surgeon and his Cat.
The Banker Mitchell's Antipathy to Kittens.
Sir Walter Scott's Visit to the Black Dwarf.—David Ritchie's Cat.
Archbishop Whately's Anecdote of the Cat that used to Ring the Bell.
Bussapa, the Tiger-slayer, and the Tiger.
John Hunter and the Dead Tiger.
Tigers.
Lion and Tiger.
Androcles and the Lion.
Sir George Davis and the Lion
Canova's Lions and the Child.
Admiral Napier and the Lion in the Tower.
Old Lady and the Beasts on the Mound.
Dr Adam Clarke on Shetland Seals.
Dr Edmonston on Shetland Seals.
The Walrus.
Kangaroo Cooke.
Pets of some of the Revolutionary Butchers. A Squirrel.
Arctic Voyager and the Lemming.
The Duke of Wellington and the Musk-rat.
Lady Eglintoun and the Rats.
General Douglas and the Rats.
Hanover Rats.
Irishman Employed Shooting Rats.
James Watt and the Rat's Whiskers.
The Poet Gray compares the Poet-Laureate to a Rat-catcher.
Jeremy Bentham and the Mice.
Burns and the Field Mouse.
TO A MOUSE, ON TURNING UP HER NEST WITH THE PLOUGH, NOVEMBER 1785.
Destructive Field Mice.
The Baron Von Trenck and the Tame Mouse in Prison.
Alexander Wilson and the Mouse.
William Cowper on his Hares.
Hairs or Hares!
S. Bisset and his trained Hare and Turtle.
A Family of Rabbits all Blind of one Eye.
Thomas Fuller on Norfolk Rabbits.
Dr Chalmers and the Guinea-Pig.
Reverend Sydney Smith on the Sloth.
The Elephant and his Trunk.
Sir Richard Phillips and Jelly made of Ivory Dust.—A Vegetarian taken in.
J. T. Smith and the Elephant.
The Elephant and the Tailor.
Dr Johnson alluded to as "an Elephant."
Elephant's Skin.
Cuvier and the Fossil.
S. Bisset and his Learned Pig.
Quixote Bowles fond of Pigs.
On Jekyll nearly thrown down by a very small Pig.
Good Enough for a Pig.
The Countryman's Criticism on the Pigs in Gainsborough's Picture of the Girl and Pigs.
Hook and the Litter of Pigs.
Jests about Swine.
Pigs and Silver Spoon.
Joseph Sturge, when a boy, and the Pigs.
Bell-Rock Horse.
Burke and the Horse.
David Garrick and his Horse.
The Herald and George III.'s Horse.
Rowland Hill and his Horse at Dunbar.
A Saying of Rowland Hill's.
Holcroft on the Horse.
A Joke of Lord Mansfield's about a Horse.
General Sir John Moore and his Horse at the Battle of Corunna.
Neither Horses nor Children can explain their Complaints.
Horses with Names.
"Old Jack" of Waterloo Bridge.
Sydney Smith and his Horses.
Judge Story and the Names he gave his Horses.
Wordsworth on Cruelty to Horses in Ireland.
Use of Tail.—Short-Tailed and Long-Tailed Horses.
Collins and the Old Donkey of Odell, Cowper's Messenger at Olney.
Gainsborough kept an Ass.
Irishman on the Ramsgate Donkeys.
Ass's Foal.
Ass.
Warren Hastings and the Refractory Donkey.
Northcote, the Royal Academician, an Angel at an Ass.
Sydney Smith's accomplished Donkey, with Francis Jeffrey on his Back.
Sydney Smith on the Sagacity of the Ass; a Lady scarcely so wise as one.
Asses' Duty Free!
Thackeray and the Egyptian Donkey.
Best to let Mules have their own Way.
Captain William Peel, R.N. Remarks on Camels.
A Captain in the Royal Navy Measures the Progress of "the Ship of the Desert."
Lord Metcalfe on a Camel when a Boy.
Earl of Dalhousie and the ferocious Stag.
The French Count and the Stag.
Venison Fat.—Reynolds and the Gourmand.
Stag-trench at Frankfort-on-the-Maine.
Giraffe.
How many Legs has a Sheep?
Goethe on Roos's Etchings of Sheep.
Lord Cockburn and the Sheep.
Woolsack.
Sandy Wood and his Pets, a Sheep and a Raven.
General Carnac and his She-goat.
Commodore Keppel "beards" the Dey of Algiers.—A Goat.
A Great Calf.
Adam Clarke and his Bullock Pat.
Samuel Foote and the Cows Pulling the Bell of Worcester College Chapel.
The General's Cow.
Gilpin's Love of the Picturesque carried out.—A Reason for keeping Three Cows.
King James on a Cow getting over the Border.
Duke of Montague and his Hospital for old Cows and Horses.
Philip IV. of Spain in the Bull-ring.
Sydney Smith and his Cattle.—His "Universal Scratcher."
Rev. Augustus Toplady on the Future State of Animals.
Right Honourable William Windham, M.P., on the Feelings of a Baited Bull.
Whalebone.
Very like a Whale.
Christopher North on the Whale.
THE END.
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