"Fancy," said Sydney Smith to some ladies, when he was told that one of the giraffes at the Zoological Gardens had caught a cold,—"fancy a giraffe with two yards of sore throat."
In one of the numbers of Punch, published in 1864, the quiz of an artist has made the giraffes twist their necks into a loose knot by way of a comforter to keep them from catching a cold, or having a sore throat. He has very audaciously caused to be printed under his cut, "A Fact."
SHEEP AND GOATS.
These are animals, at least the former, which seem to have been created in a domestic state. They are represented on the most ancient monuments. A head of a Lybian ram of very large size, in the British Museum, has great resemblance to nature, and there is one slab at least among the Assyrian monuments where sheep and goats, as part of the spoil of a city, are rendered with great skill. In the writings of the Ettrick Shepherd, many curious anecdotes of Scottish sheep are given.
How many Legs has a Sheep?
When the Earl of Bradford was brought before the Lord Chancellor to be examined upon application for a statute of lunacy against him, the Chancellor asked him, "How many legs has a sheep?"—"Does your lordship mean," answered Lord Bradford, "a live sheep or a dead sheep?"—"Is it not the same thing?" said the Chancellor.—"No, my lord," said Lord Bradford, "there is much difference: a live sheep may have four legs, a dead sheep has only two; the two fore-legs are shoulders; there are only two legs of mutton."[260]
Goethe on Roos's Etchings of Sheep.
In the "Conversations of Goethe with Eckerman and Soret"[261] in 1824, he handed me some etchings by Roos, the famous painter of animals; they were all of sheep, in every posture and position. The simplicity of their countenances, the ugliness and shagginess of the fleece—all was represented with the utmost fidelity, as if it were nature itself.
"I always feel uneasy," said Goethe, "when I look at these beasts. Their state—so limited, dull, gaping, and dreaming—excites in me such sympathy, that I fear I shall become a sheep, and almost think the artist must have been one. At all events, it is most wonderful how Roos has been able to think and feel himself into the very soul of these creatures, so as to make the internal character peer with such force through the outward covering. Here you see what a great talent can do when it keeps steady to subjects which are congenial with its nature."