NATHANIEL LAWRENCE AUSTEN. xxxi 



A cheetah belonging to H. R. H. the Prince 

 of Wales, now in the gardens, is a disagreeable 

 savage animal, no amount of kind treatment will 

 tame him ; there is also in the collection another 

 cheetah from South Africa, called the woolly cheetah, 

 this also has an untamably bad temper. 



When writing of the African elephant at the 

 gardens (see page 106), Mr. Austen remarks : " He 

 is at present, Feb. 24, 1866, between five and six 

 years old, and will probably prove a very large 

 animal, being now five feet one inch in height." 

 The elephant is now no less than ten feet five 

 inches in height, so that he has grown five feet 

 four inches in eleven years. This is the most rapid 

 growth of an elephant on record. Sir Joseph 

 Fayrer tells Mr. Bartlett that no Indian elephant 

 ever grew at this unprecedented rate. This beast 

 has grown twice as much as an Indian elephant in 

 the same time. So that Mr. Austen's prophecy, 

 that this African elephant would grow to a large 

 size, has been fulfilled. This rapid growth is due 

 to the great care Mr. Bartlett takes that the skin 

 of the elephant shall be kept clean and soft. 

 Mr. Bartlett recollects quite well Austen's trying 

 experiments on tigers with valerian, as recorded at 

 page 60. He thinks Austen's discovery very im- 

 portant, as it may enable hunters in India to attract 

 and kill man-eating tigers. These are generally 



