GENERAL TREATMENT. 335 



in their annual migrations to seaside or highland quarters, 

 our city families give little care or attention to the poor cats, 

 or other domestic animals whom they leave behind. This, 

 indeed, is one of the common and flagrant forms of cruelty 

 of or by neglect. There is no reason why every large town 

 should not have its nursery for cats, dogs, and feathered 

 pets, as for human infants. 



11. Special or separate cemeteries for domestic animals 

 may be considered an unnecessary refinement of man's hu- 

 manity to subject creatures. Nor are they necessary if man 

 does not object to give deserving animals, his old favourites 

 and pets, honourable sepulture beside himself, in a sepa- 

 rate partition if required of his own roomy modern ceme- 

 teries. But we are told that such things as special cemeteries 

 exist, and their existence or establishment is to be com- 

 mended and encouraged. Thus a cemetery for pet animals 

 horses, dogs, and cats is to be found at Dangsten, Sussex ; 

 and it is chronicled that not long ago a votive tablet was 

 erected in it, bearing an epitaph in blank verse c from the pen 

 of one of the most distinguished statesmen of the English 

 Cabinet.' 1 



Epitaphs on the tombs of cats, dogs, and other animal 

 pets, whether in cemeteries, or more usually in the gar- 

 dens or grounds of their human proprietors, are by no 

 means uncommon. They are various in their character 

 poetical or prosaic, punning, pathetic, amusing, or simply 

 descriptive of gratitude or long service. Many epitaphs 

 commemorative of animal virtues are to be found quoted in 

 the 'Animal World'; and there are some with which all 

 readers of classical English are, or are supposed to be, familiar, 

 such as that of Byron on his dog ' Boatswain's' tomb at 

 Newstead Abbey. 



12. In elegies, odes, or sonnets of all kinds and of every 

 degree of excellence, poets and versifiers have celebrated the 

 good qualities or the good services, the heroism in life- 

 saving or life- sacrifice, the better than human fidelity or 

 friendship, the real nobility of character, of such animals 

 as the dog. Cowper's addresses to his tame hares, ' Puss ' 



1 North British Advertiser,' March 20, 1875. 



