200 ZOOLOGICAL SKETCHES. 



searches or by guarding the door against an imaginary 

 foe, listening and starting with well-feigned excitement, 

 like a barking lap-dog simulating wheeziness by way of 

 signalizing his official zeal. It may be real gratitude, 

 though : a disinterestedly beneficent and, as far as they 

 can perceive, omnipotent being must be a god in their 

 eyes. Munificence charms even a quadruped savage, 

 unselfish munificence, at least. For it quickly alters the 

 matter if we expect any services in return, especially 

 such as involve a loss of personal liberty. In this sense 

 a good many wild animals are not tamable, or only 

 apparently so. It is curious after how many years of 

 seeming resignation the involuntary recluses of our 

 menageries will avail themselves of the first opportunity 

 to escape. In the winter of 1875, Professor Rentz, the 

 German Barnum, lost one of his lions during a freight- 

 train collision near Furth, on the Frankfort and Ratisbon 

 Railroad. The deserter had been one of his performing 

 animals, and during the last six years his keeper had 

 often permitted him to leave his cage ; but this had been 

 his first chance for an out-door ramble, and he certainly 

 made the best of that chance. Five weeks afterward he 

 was shot near Villach, in Carinthia, having evidently 

 tried to rejoin his free relatives, for in that interval he 

 had travelled nearly a thousand miles southeast, or rather 

 as nearly due south as the Alps would let him. 



Monkeys can never be trusted in summer-time. The 

 mere sight of a snow-storm is enough to scare them 



