256 THE RING OF NATURE 



its long piston-like legs claw at it, like the spokes 

 of a bicycle wheel, so rapidly that you can scarcely 

 see them move, and all in a tremble of balked agility 

 it carries off the food it should have caught at 

 forty miles an hour only to gnaw it like a cat 

 in the back of its cage. 



I like the cheetah, the leopards, the puma, and 

 the tigers better than the king of beasts whose 

 house they share. The young lions point a curious 

 moral, if we can read it. Cubs that are bred in 

 the Zoo are fierce and intractable, while those that 

 are caught young in the forest are far more amiable. 

 It is as though all the bitter years of walking up 

 and down, up and down behind bars to be stared 

 at by cruel and stupid bipeds, had turned sour the 

 milk of leonine kindness, and infected the babes 

 with more than the expressed indignation of the 

 parents. Tom, Dick and Harry, three fine males 

 in the Zoo, are forest-bred lions. It is true that 

 Dick badly mauled a too familiar visitor a few 

 years ago, and that there is some other little 

 matter against Harry, but the keeper declares 

 that the lions were more sinned against than sinning. 

 Dick is now a married man. It is he and his wife 

 that inhabit the first den on the lion side after you 

 pass the keeper's chair. 



Behind the keeper's chair a passage runs to 

 the back. Hence comes the meat at feeding-time, 

 and this way will the keeper lead wishful visitors 

 to the regions behind the dens where are some- 

 times interesting pets. A young lion now nearly 



