MEMORIALS TO ANIMALS

Shannon News, 23 July 1926, Page 4

MEMORIALS TO ANIMALS

At the church of St. Jude-on.the-Hill, in Hampstead Garden Suburb, the Rev. Basil Bourchier has recently dedicated a memorial to the horses killed in the Great War. It is a bronze statuette of a Clydesdale stallion. Here and there about the world there are Quite a number of memorials to animals, in churches and with' the accident. \ Park, New, York, last autumn. The subject is “Balto,” leader of the > team of 13 “huskies” which made record time on their 300-mile dash to Nome, up in North Alaska, with the diphtheria anti.toxin that saved the stricken town. A medal embossed with his own portrait was presented to “Finard,” an Alsatian wolfhound, of Marakesh, in Morocco, which tore the burning bedclothes from his mistress, when a lamp exploded, thus saving her life. A pathetic epitaph was engraved on the silver coffin plate of a dog buried in a family vault in Ulster: “Such was my dog, who now without my aid Hunts through the shadow land, himself a shade; Or crouched, perchance, before some ghostly gate Awaits my step as here he used to wait.” How many churches, I wonder, commemorate rabbits? Three oi these little animals, I am told, are shown on, the brass of Bishop Wyvil, in Salisbury Cathedral. The first memorial to a bee was erected on a promontory of Northbrook Island* last year, in the archipelago of Franz Joseph Land, by the Worsley. Algarrson Arctic Expedition. . She was a queen, taken up there with 50 nurse bees. Dying on August 1, from the cold, she was placed in a small bottle of alcohol, in a canister, and over was built a cairn o stones, topped with a notice-board that named the cape Point Apis, in her memory. There is a snake on the Gladstone statue, in the Strand, and Africa House, in Kingsway. commemorates a small zooful of the j Dark Contient’s fauna, including crocodile, buffalo, snake, camel, elephant and lion. It is due to memorials in churches that we have records of the names our ancestors gave to dogs more than half a thousand years ago. The name of “lakke” (“Jack or “Jacky”) was engraved on a brass embossed with his picture, which used to be in Ingham Church m Norfolk, dated 1438. Faithfu , “Terris” is shown at the feet of Lady Cassy, Chief Baron of the Ex-, chequer, in Priory Church, Deerhurst, Gloucestershire; the memorial was erected .in 1400. Earlier still was commemorated “Bo,” who has been sitting at the feet of an effigy of one of the Reynes family since 1390 in Clifton Reynes Church, m Buckinghamshire; his name is on his j collar. . . - Near New York is a memorial of ! “Betty,” the first elephant to emigrate to America; and at Luneberg, in Hanover, there is a monument to a pig which was instrumental m causing the discovery of a . I mineral spring. In several Continental churches there are memona of bears which legend declared i the pets and companions of noiy Dog memorials in churches show

up that 500 years ago. fair ladies found amusement in adorning their little pet dogs with collars from which dangled tinkling bells. You will find Dick Whittington’s cat-—a fine plump pussy, too—in Westminster Abbey itself, at the bottom lefthand corner of the nave window commemorating Lord Kelvin.