COMIC ANIMALS 263 



curiously different. Young puppies when just learning 

 to walk are invariably comic. Their noses are square 

 and blunt, their youthful faces wrinkled and lined, 

 their eyes weak and bleared, and their voices cracked 

 and squeaky. This gives the appearance of age in 

 very young creatures, and as they are round, fat, and 

 have large feet, they are not at all unlike little hippo- 

 potami an instance of animal caricaturing animal. 



Frogs and toads have their special vein of comicality, 

 due to their staring eyes, consequential, stupid mouths, 

 fat stomachs, and sticking-out elbows. There has 

 been a consensus of human opinion about the frog's 

 appearance from jEsop and the authors of "The 

 Battle of the Frogs and Mice " to Mr. Ruskin in his 

 remarks on Bewick's little picture of the frog, under- 

 neath which the old engraver had written, " Set them 

 up with a King indeed ! " 



Pigs, especially happy pigs, when not too fat but 

 only "well liking," and free to wander in a big 

 yard and forage for themselves, are among the 

 most comic of all animals. Almost all the neces- 

 sary elements are present fat bodies and fat cheeks, 

 twinkling eyes, tightly curling tails, short turned-up 

 noses, voices capable of expressing in a grunt 

 intense greedy self-satisfaction or curiosity, and all 

 forms of squeaks and squeals for surprise, fear, and 

 panic. The writer recently watched a family of 

 young pigs, about eighteen inches long, just turned 

 out to spend the morning in a meadow ; and returned 

 convinced that there was not a moment at which their 

 appearance and behaviour was not too comical for 



