INTRODUCTION. 



living man has ever known, and none will ever fully know, the bosky realm* 

 where the wild beasts live and roam in natural freedom. 



But they wish to know. There is no more fascinating study, and the sa- 

 vant and the child pursue it with equal pleasure. In the menagerie and zoological 

 garden, wherever "the animals" are, there may be found a crowd of those who 

 watch and study the captives with unfailing interest. 



The world they once lived in is a realm of the imagination; a land of wild glens, 

 and deep thickets, and wide sluggish streams, where it is never winter, and where 

 man is only an intruder and was never owner or master. Here and there the mind 

 sees the palm-thatched huts, or the little squalid mud-built villages whose inhabi- 

 tants pass each night in half-waking fear of the tiger, strong, beautiful and treacher- 

 ous, whose padded feet give no sound when he comes to select his victim. One 

 watches the spotted leopard as he walks back and forth in his cage, and tries 

 to picture him as he lay prone on the branch of a roadside tree, his yellow eyes 

 gleaming as he waits for the unsuspecting traveler to pass beneath. 



And as the lion looks out upon the crowd one recalls the tales of Livingston, the 

 devoted missionary, who has told us how he felt when those strong jaws closed in 

 his shoulder. And one remembers Speke, and Grant, and Du Chaillu, and Stanley, 

 and with what eagerness he read the stories of their travels in the great Dark Con- 

 tinent whose interior is even yet unknown to civili/ed mankind. The elands, and 

 gnus, and zebras, which once sped across the African plains one sees before him, and 

 he wonders if they can have entirely forgotten all that he would so much like to 

 know. 



And the huge elephant stands there, chained by his hinder foot, his small eyes 

 scanning the passing crowd, and his wonderful finger-pointed proboscis extended as 

 far as it will reach for a single peanut. The creature seems too huge and strong 

 to have been captured by puny man. He has a wonderful history which he prob- 

 ably remembers; a history which he cannot tell, and which we will never fully know. 

 Once the night of the jungle was around him, and the feathery palm was above his 

 huge head, and he went to a stream to drink and bathe where the huge and thick- 

 skinned rhinoceros quarrelled with him ami \\:i- defeated. He was the master, and 

 we long to know how he met tin- hunter and was defeated, conquered and enslaved. 



The interest dwells largely with the greatest, but there are smaller though not 

 less interesting animals on every hand. They also are the spoil of the hunter for 



