24 AUTHENTICITY OF ANECDOTES 



have originally appeared anonymously as contributions to the 

 serial press gives us occasional opportunity of discovering the 

 names, and consequent competency, of the said anonymous 

 writers as observers and recorders of facts in natural history. 



But even when the author of anecdotes of animal feeling 

 and sagacity gives his name to the public as a voucher for 

 their authenticity, fact may be clothed in such a garb that 

 it has all the semblance of beautiful fiction, and as such an 

 imaginative public prefers to regard and accept it. I 

 very well remember, when in Edinburgh some years ago, and 

 in conversation on the subject of animal reason with a lady of 

 much shrewdness both in observation and inference, a relative 

 of my own, who had, like so many of her countrywomen, 

 been much moved by Dr. John Brown's well-known story of 

 ' Rab and his Friends,' that she cast a doubt on its truth- 

 fulness, regarding it as a c story,' and a mere story, and 

 thinking all the more highly of it on that account. I had 

 myself no reason to doubt that the story was fact, or founded 

 on fact. But calling on the author himself, and discussing 

 the subject of the apparent incredibility of real enough occur- 

 rences illustrative of animal intelligence, I took the oppor- 

 tunity of putting the question to him personally and directly 

 whether or not ' Rab ' was a fact, and behaved as he is said 

 to have done. The answer was what I had expected that 

 it was all ' perfectly true.' 



And this leads me on to remark that the student of 

 anecdotes of animal sagacity will constantly find that 



Truth is strange 

 Stranger than fiction ; 



that incidents which appear simply incredible, and which 

 are relegated to the category of fable or romance, on investi- 

 gation prove to be, like Dr. John Brown's ' Rab,' ' perfectly 

 true.' A distinguished author, well known as a canophilist, 

 told me some years ago that he dared not publish certain 

 anecdotes or incidents illustrating the remarkable intelli- 

 gence of dogs and birds under exceptional circumstances, 

 though he believed them to be ' perfectly true,' just because 

 they would not be believed by the public. They would have 



