OF WILD ANIMALS 79 



It was then that Dohong's inventive genius rose to its 

 climax. He decided to attack the brackets singly, and conquer 

 them one by one. On examining the situation very critically, 

 he found that each bracket consisted of a right-angled triangle 

 of wrought iron, with its perpendicular side against the wall, 

 its base uppermost, and its hypotenuse out in the air. Through 

 the open centre of the triangle he introduced the end of his 

 trapeze bar, chain and all, as far as it would go, then gave a 

 mighty heave. The end of his lever was against the wall, and 

 the power was applied in such a manner that few machine screws 

 could stand so great a strain. One by one, the screws were torn 

 out of the wood, and finally each bracket worked upon was torn 

 off. 



But there was one exception. The screws of one bracket 

 were so firmly set in a particularly hard strip of the upright 

 tongued-and-grooved yellow pine flooring that formed the wall, 

 the board itself was finally torn out, full length! The board 

 was four inches wide, seven-eighths of an inch thick, and seven 

 feet long. Originally it was so firmly nailed that no one 

 believed that it could be torn from its place.* 



Without delay, Dohong started in with his lever to pry off 

 the remaining boards of the wall, but this movement was 

 promptly checked. Our next task consisted in making long 

 bolts by which the brackets of the horizontal bars were bolted 

 entirely through the partition walls and held so powerfully on 

 the other side that even the lever could not wreck them. 



As soon as the brackets were made secure, Dohong turned 

 his attention to the two large sleeping boxes which were built 

 very solidly on the balcony of his cage. Both of those struc- 

 tures he tore completely to pieces, always working with the 

 utmost good nature and cheerfulness. . Realizing that they 



* In the winter of 192 1 about a dozen newspapers in the United States pub- 

 lished a sensational syndicated article, occupying an entire page, in which all 

 of Dohong's lever discovery and cage- wrecking performances were reported as 

 of recent occurrence, and credited to a stupid and uninteresting young orang 

 called Gabong, now in the Zoological Park, that has not even the merit of suf- 

 ficient intelligence to maintain a proper state of bodily uprightness, let alone 

 the invention of mechanical principles. 



