When I were a wee nipper we used to take our dog onto the train and she would just lie down under the seat and go to sleep. Mind you, she wasn't quite so keen on trains after we came back late one night along the Breckland line sat behind the drivers cab in a Cl101 and ran over a fog signal.
Reminds me of the famous "Punch" cartoon from 1869.
I was always lead to believe that the punchline to that related to a story relating to one Frank Buckland.
It would be acme of stupidity to say that the Victorians were a weird bunch, and few could claim to be weirder than Frank Buckland. He was the son of William Buckland, the Dean of Westminster and the man who made geology and palaeontology into respectable academic subjects and was the first person to describe a dinosaur twenty years before the word had even been coined. The family home during young Frank's childhood was part museum and part wildlife park, with all manner of creatures living sharing the house with the Buckland family.
Hardly surprisingly, Buckland inherited his father's interest in the natural world and his habit of introducing unsuitable animals into his living quarters continued while he studied at Oxford. These included snakes, marmots, a jackal, an eagle and a bear that would make appearances at college drinks parties wearing a scholar's cap and gown.
One other passion that he inherited from his father was zoophagy; that is the eating of unusual animals. William Buckland claimed to have eaten his way through the entire animal kingdom from mouse to bison, and it was claimed that he had even eaten the preserved heart of French King Louis XIV stating
"I have eaten many stange things, but I have never eaten the heart of a king before" prior to gobbling it up before anyone could stop him. Hedgehog, rat, puppy, potted ostrich, tortoise and pickled horse tongue all made regular appearances on the menu. William's palate was only ever defeated twice, by boiled mole and a ragout of bluebottles. However, Frank took things even further by attempting rhino pies, fried earwigs, stewed porpoise head and chops from a panther buried for several days.
In spite of his great appetite, Frank was still a naturalist at heart and little short of a walking zoo himself. He always had some animal or other secreted in a pocket about his person. Which brings us to his brush with railway officialdom.
On one occasion while travelling through Southampton docks he was stopped and fined 5 shillings for attempting to smuggle a monkey aboard a train. The clerk had insisted on treating it as a dog and issuing it with a dog ticket. Incensed, Buckland produced a tortoise from his pocket and demanded
"Perhaps you'll call that a dog too?", to which the clerk replied
"No, sir. We make no charge for that. That, sir, is an insect".
O L Leigh
hock:
good doggy 