We must not quit Cruikshank's zoological drawings without remarking on the curious inconsistency of his attitude towards animals. We find him both callous and tender. In illustrating "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" he chose (one assumes) to draw the Baron flaying the fox by flagellation; at any rate we have his wood-cut depicting the abominable operation; and in "Scraps and Sketches" (1832), poor Reynard, for the sake of a pun, is exhibited as "Tenant intail" of a spring-trap. Yet in "My Sketch Book" (1835) he presents us with frogs expostulating with small boys for throwing stones at them ("I pray you to cease, my little Dears! for though it may be sport to you, it is death to us"). Again, his canine reference to cats' meat, already mentioned, implies a heartlessness towards horses which is contradicted by his touching but not much prized etching _The Knackers Yard_, to be found in "The Voice of Humanity" (May 1831), in "The Melange" (1834), and in "The Elysium of Animals" (1836). Moreover, in "My Sketch Book" (1835) he severely exhibits human insensitiveness to the sufferings of quadrupeds in _The Omnibus Brutes--qy. which are they?_ It is therefore clear that Cruikshank thought humanely about animals, though as a humorist he was irresponsible and gave woe's present to ease--its comicality. And before we write him down a vulgarian let us remember our share in his laughter at the absurdity of incarnations which confer tails on elemental furies and indecencies, and compel elemental importances and respectabilities to satisfy their self-love by ruinous grimaces and scaffoldings of adipose tissue. [Illustration: "THE CAT DID IT!" From "The Greatest Plague in Life" (1847).] In a comparison I have already associated Cruikshank with Lewis Carroll, who was systematically the finest humorist produced by England till his death in 1898. The most intensely comic thing ever wrought by the hand of Cruikshank is, I think, by the absolute perfection of its reasoning _a priori_, a genuine "carroll" in a minor key. It is the drawing in "Scraps and Sketches" (1832) in which, to a haughty, unamused commander, the complainant says, "Please, your Honor, Tom Towzer has tied my tail so tight that I can't shut my eyes."