392 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 



a stall, and offered them to him. Chuny eyed him askance, took 

 them, threw them beneath his feet, and Avhen he had crushed 

 them to pulp, spurned them from him. Young, who had gone 

 into Covent Garden on the same errand as the gentleman who 

 had preceded him, shortly after re-entered, and also held out to 

 him some fruit, when, to the astonishment of the bystanders, 

 the elephant ate every morsel, and after he had done so, twined 

 his trunk with studied gentleness around Young's waist, mark- 

 ing by his action that, though he had resented a wrong, he did 

 not forget a kindness. 



It was in the year 1814 that Harris parted with Chuny to 

 Cross, the proprietor of the menagerie at Exeter Change. One 

 of the purchaser's first acts was to send Charles Young a life 

 ticket of admission to his exhibition; and it was one of his little 

 innocent vanities, when passing through the Strand with any 

 friend, to drop in on Chuny, pay him a visit in his den, and 

 show the intimate relations which existed between them. Some 

 years after, when the elephant's theatrical career was run, and 

 he was reduced to play the part of captive in one of the cages of 

 Exeter Change, a thoughtless dandy one day amused himself by 

 teasing him with the repeated offer of lettuces a vegetable for 

 which he was known to have an antipathy. At last he pre- 

 sented him with an apple, but, at the moment of his taking it, 

 drove a large pin into his trunk, and then sprang out of hig 

 reach. The keeper seeing that the poor creature was getting angry, 

 warned the silly fellow off, lest he should become dangerous. 

 With a contemptuous shrug of the shoulder, he trudged off to the 

 other end of the gallery, and there displayed his cruel ingenuity 

 on other humbler beasts, till, after the absence of half-an-hour, 

 he once more approached one of the cages opposite the elephant's. 

 By this time he had forgotten his pranks with Chuny, but Chuny 

 had not forgotten him ; and as he was standing with his back 

 towards him, he thrust his proboscis through the bars of his 

 prison, twitched off the offender's hat, dragged it in to him, tore 

 it to shreds, then threw it into the face of the offending gaby, 

 consummating his revenge with a loud guffaw of exultation. All 

 present proclaimed their approbation of this act of retributive 

 justice, and the discomfited coxcomb had to retreat from the 

 scene in confusion, jump into a hackney coach, and betake him- 

 self to the hatter's in quest of a new tile for his unroofed skull. 

 The tragic end of poor Chuny must be within the recollection of 

 many of my readers. From some cause unknoAvn he went mad, 

 and after poison had been tried in vain it took 152 shots, dis- 

 charged by a detachment of the Guards, to despatch him. 1 

 1 Quoted in Animal World, March 1882. 



