CHAPTER V. 
TRAINING WILD ANIMALS. 
Tuers is probably no sphere in which the growth of humani- 
tarian sentiment has been more striking than in the treat- 
ment and training of performing animals. Obedience which 
in former days was due to fear is now willingly paid by the 
animal from motives of affection. The period when un- 
fortunate animals were driven to jump over a bar from dread 
of a whip or a red-hot iron—a disgrace to the humanity of 
man!—is gone by. Sympathy with the animal, patience 
with its deficiencies, has brought about a perfection of educa- 
tion which cruelty altogether failed to secure. And at the 
same time relations between trainer and beast have improved 
too. The trainer is no longer a taskmaster, or the beast 
a slave. There subsists between them the wholesome and 
happy relation of teacher and pupil. The old crude method 
of training—if these stupid barbarities deserved to be called 
training ; torturing would have been a more appropriate 
expression—consisted in terrifying the animals with whips 
and red-hot irons, so that at the very sight of these imple- 
ments they would fly through the cage, and in doing so would 
leap over whatever obstacle was placed in their path. 
Many years ago I saw at an auction in England four 
“trained” lions, whose whiskers had been scorched off and 
who were frightfully burned about their mouths. Naturally, 
when the animals were treated in this way, it was no un- 
common thing for the trainers to be attacked and torn to 
pieces ; nor can one blame the lions and tigers which at last 
turned round upon their tormentors, for their better natures 
t18 
