POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



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when he was connected with a circus, by ac- 

 quiring an extraordinary power over horses, 

 which he taught every trick known to the 

 profession, and some which have hardly 

 been exactly paralleled. From this he went 

 on to taming wild beasts ; and, soon after he 

 had started business as part proprietor of a 

 menagerie, he had labored eight months in 

 training a royal tiger, and had taught a 

 spotted hyena to pick up his gloves. He 

 was never seen with a whip in his hand ; 

 but he crossed his arms, and gave his ani- 

 mals the word of command to leap on and 

 off his shoulders ; and he considered his 

 method infinitely superior to that of the 

 tamers who go through their business chief- 

 ly by the terrorism of a heavy whip and a 

 revolver. Their beasts obey them, but, he 

 said, " they are not tamed as mine were, and, 

 when one of them rebels, you can judge the 

 tragic result from the tragical end of Lu- 

 cas." One day, Martin told his wife that 

 he anticipated trouble with his lion Cobourg, 

 who wag then in a dangerous state of ex- 

 citement. She begged him to put off the 

 performance, but he said : " No ; for, if I 

 should do it once, I should have to do it 

 every time the animals have caprices." The 

 next night his forebodings were fulfilled. 

 Instead of performing his part properly, 

 Cobourg crouched low and dug his talons 

 into the stage, and his eyes flared. Martin 

 had no weapon at command except a dagger 

 in his belt " I have said, never a whip." 

 Instead of obeying orders, the lion leaped 

 at Martin, and a combat occurred, in the 

 course of which the lion took Martin up in 

 his mouth and shook him in the air. Mar- 

 tin struck the animal over the nose for a 

 second time, and then, feeling his strength 

 exhausted, gave himself up for lost, and 

 turned his back to the beast, so that at the 

 next spring it might attack the back of his 

 neck, and 'so "make an end of the busi- 

 ness. . . . But two seconds passed, two sec- 

 onds that seemed to me an eternity. I 

 turned around ; the lion's mood had changed. 

 He looked at the audience, he looked at me. 

 I gave him the sign to go. He went away 

 as if nothing had happened." It was four- 

 teen weeks before Martin could perform 

 again, but then the lion worked well as usu- 

 al, and continued to do so for four years 

 without any more caprices. In taming one 



of his tigers, Martin began by taking the 

 brute's attention off the door of the cage, 

 and then, armed with a dagger, went rapid- 

 ly into the cage and stood looking at the 

 tiger, which for some minutes lay motion- 

 less, staring at him. Then, feeling a shiv- 

 er, and knowing that if the tiger saw it all 

 would be over with him, he went swiftly out. 

 At the end of a fortnight he went again into 

 the cage, and this time staid there half an 

 hour. A third time he paid the tiger a visit 

 of three quarters of an hour. " The fourth 

 time the tiger, trembling at first, lay down 

 before the pygmy who braved it." To tame 

 a hyena, Martin wrapped his legs and arms 

 with cords, and protected his head with 

 handkerchiefs, and then, walking into the 

 cage, went straight to the animal and of- 

 fered it his fore-arm. The hyena bit it, and 

 the tamer, looking steadily in its eyes, stood 

 motionless. The next day he repeated the 

 experiment, substituting a leg for an arm ; 

 "and all the time Martin's black pupils 

 were flashing into the gray eye of the hy- 

 ena. The beast gave up, cringed, and smelled 

 the feet of the master." Martin tamed his 

 subjects by his personal influence alone ; 

 and Charles Nodicr once said of him : " At 

 the head of an army Martin might have 

 been a Bonaparte. Chance has made a man 

 of genius a director of a menagerie." 



A Merovingian (Frank) Grave-Yard. 



M. Georges Lecocq has described some 

 articles which he has recovered from a 

 cemetery of the Merovingian period at Cau- 

 laincourt, France. He opened 186 graves, 

 and found in them 156 coffins of wood, 

 30 cf stone, and 464 articles of glass, 

 iron, bronze, ivory, coins, beads, flints, etc. 

 The graves were generally well aligned and 

 directed from east to west. The stone 

 coffins were made, some from a single block, 

 more from two or three blocks, and were 

 wider at the head than at the foot. The 

 covers were flat or tectiform, and always 

 composed of two or three slabs. These 

 sarcophagi all contained wooden coffins. In 

 most of the burials a stone was placed over 

 the breast. The race of men whose burial- 

 place this was, do not appear to have been 

 essentially different from the present race. 

 One skull, which particularly attracted at- 

 tention, had a hole in it exactly like what 



