COMMISSION OF ERROR. 517 



Mr. Millais wrote me from London, in May, 1874 : * The 

 only fact I can call to mind which may be of use to you was 

 when I was painting in spring a picture which I called 

 " Apple Blossoms." I painted the trees when they were in full 

 flower, and, not being able to finish the work in one spring, 

 I continued the picture the following spring, so that many 

 of the flowers were quite dry. I should tell you that I had 

 my canvas out in the orchard and worked direct from nature. 

 I was perfectly annoyed by bees crawling over my canvas 

 and distinctly going to the centre of my painted blossoms 

 those a year old and scentless as well as the wet ones, which 

 might have had attraction in the way of smell, from oil and 

 turpentine. To my mind they mistook the imitation for the 

 real flower. They were a great nuisance, and retarded my 

 work, dragging their legs, clogged with white and pink 

 paint, across the canvas. Some of the blossoms I painted in 

 the foreground were nearly the real size, and to these they 

 chiefly went.' 



On the other hand, Mr. Hamerton, writing from the 

 neighbourhood of Autun, department of the Saone-et-Loire, 

 France, in July, 1874, remarks : ' So far as I have had op- 

 portunities for observing, I should say that animals do not 

 recognise painting. I remember one instance, however, of 

 a terrier which belonged to me, and which used to look at a 

 painted portrait of a pointer, in a manner that convinced me 

 she was interested in the representation. This is positively 

 the only instance of recognition of painting by an animal 

 that I can answer for. But even here the doubt remains 

 whether the terrier thought the painted pointer was a dog, or 

 only some sort of animal on four legs. We never can judge ex- 

 actly of the degree of observation which animals are capable of. 

 As to the stories like that of birds pecking fruit in the Greek 

 painting, I simply do not believe them. They are myths, 

 which would naturally form themselves in this way. One 

 spectator would say that the fruit was painted so well that 

 a bird would peck at it. This, when repeated, would soon 

 take the form that a bird had pecked at it: afterwards that 

 birds in general had pecked at it.' 



' I have tried animals often with paintings, but uni- 



