Barometers Realm

An especially attractive early British example of the comic animal-tail “barometer” postcard, combining popular weather humour with a genuine three-dimensional textile element.

The front depicts a donkey standing beside a water trough, with a dark fibre tail attached physically to the card. The instructions transform this simple appendage into a mock meteorological instrument: a dry tail means fine weather, a wet tail rain, movement indicates wind, rapid movement stormy weather, invisibility fog, and a frozen tail cold. The final line provides the punchline: “If Tail falls off … Earthquake.”

Unlike a true barometer, of course, the device does not predict atmospheric change. It merely reacts directly to conditions already present. Its humour lies precisely in presenting obvious observation as if it were scientific measurement.

The card is also notable for its illustration, signed by Donald McGill, who became one of the best-known British comic postcard artists of the twentieth century. His involvement gives the object an additional place within the history of British popular graphic culture, beyond its interest as meteorological ephemera. The reverse confirms that this example was actually used and mailed. The surviving 1903 postal cancellation provides a secure terminus for the card’s circulation and places it among the earlier surviving examples of this type of novelty weather postcard.

Together with the American Mule Barometer and the French Cow Barometer, this card demonstrates how the same basic joke circulated internationally in different regional forms. The animal might change, but the mechanism remained the same: an exposed fibre tail functioning as an intentionally absurd substitute for a scientific weather instrument.