The TIGER is of rare occurrence on signboards; there is a GOLDEN TIGER in Pilgrim Street, Newcastle, and a bird-fancier on Tower Dock, not far from the then famous menagerie which attracted crowds to the Tower, chose the LEOPARD AND TIGER for his sign. In 1665 there was a LEOPARD Tavern in Chancery Lane; the same animal is still occasionally seen on public-house signs. Generally speaking, the carnivorous animals are not great favourites, and those named above are almost the only examples that occur. As for the popularity of the BEAR, it is entirely to be attributed to the old vulgar pleasure of seeing him ill-treated, a relic of the once common amusements of bear-baiting and whipping. The colours in which he is represented are the BLACK BEAR, the BROWN BEAR, the WHITE BEAR, and in a very few instances (as at Leeds) the RED BEAR. Besides bear-whipping and bear-baiting, another barbarous fancy led sometimes to the choice of this animal for a sign,--viz., the lamentable pun which the publican made upon the article he sold, and the name of the animal. Will. Rose of Coleraine, in Ireland, for instance, issued trades tokens with a bear passant, on the reverse EXCHANGE.FOR.A.CAN (_i.e._, of Bear!), and as if the pun was not ridiculous enough, there was a rose as a rebus for his name. Thomas Dawson of Leeds perpetrated a similar pun on his token, dated 1670; it says,--BEWARE.OF.Y^{E}.BEARE, evidently alluding to the strength of his beer.[199] Bears used often to be represented with chains round their neck, (as on the stone sign in Addle Street, with the date 1610.) This led to the following amusing rejoinder:--It happened that a pedestrian artist had run up a bill at a road-side inn which he was unable to pay, whereupon the landlord, in order to settle the account, commissioned him to paint a bear for his sign. The painter, wanting to make a little besides, suggested that, if the bear was painted with a chain round his neck, which he strongly advised him to have, it would cost him half-a-guinea more, on account of the gold, &c. But the host was not agreeable to this extra expense; accordingly, the sign was painted, (but in distemper,) and the painter went his way. Not many days after it began to rain, and the bear was completely washed from the board. The first time the landlord met the painter, he accused him in great dudgeon of having imposed upon him, for that, in less than a month, the bear had gone from his signboard. “Now, look here,” replied the painter; “did not I advise you to have a chain put about the bear’s neck? but you would not hear of it; had that been done he could not have run away, and would still be at your door.”