P. S.—By-the-bye, talking of cats, there is a story current, that a certain archbishop, who sits neither at Canterbury nor York, having once, in unbending mood, demanded of one of his clergy if he could decline "cat," corrected the reverend catechumen, when, having arrived at the vocative case, he gave it, "Vocative, O cat!" and declared such declension to be wrong, and that the vocative of "cat" was "puss." Of course, it will be henceforth considered so in the diocese presided over by the prelate in question, as the gender of "carrosse" was changed throughout la belle France, by a blunder of the grand monarque. But surely the archbishop was as palpably wrong as the king was. At least, if he was not, we have only the alternative of considering Shakspeare to have blundered. For, have we not Stefano's address to poor Caliban:
"Open your mouth; here is that which will give language to you, cat."
And again, does not Lysander, somewhat ungallantly, thus apostrophise Hermia:
"Hang off, thou cat, thou burr!"
Moreover, will not the pages of our nursery literature furnish on the other hand abundance of
instances passim of puss used in every one of the oblique cases, as well as in the nominative?
Tailless Cats (Vol. ix., pp. 10. 111.).—It may be interesting to your correspondent Shirley Hibberd to know, that the Burmese breed of cats is, like that of the Isle of Man, tailless; or, if not exactly without tails, the tails they have are so short as to be called so merely by the extremest courtesy. This is the only respect, however, in which they differ from other cats.
S. B.
Lucknow.
Francklyn Household Book (Vol. ix., p. 422.).—