122 BEASTS AND MEN 
inquiry whether I could supply him with some lions. It 
happened that I had just purchased a whole collection of 
animals, among which were some lions that had always been 
used for performing purposes. Cooper came himself to 
Hamburg, inspected the animals, and, having completed the 
purchase, took them with him immediately to Brussels. At 
Brussels he made the grave mistake of putting all the lions, 
old and new, together, instead of slowly and gradually allow- 
ing the animals to become acquainted with each other. The 
new lions had never worked with other specimens and were 
strange to their surroundings. They became irritable and 
nervous, and when Cooper tried to drive them with a whip 
to the performance of the tricks, a catastrophe occurred. One 
of the new lions, and that the best-tempered of them, fell upon 
Cooper and mauled him savagely. Thus by a mutual mis- 
understanding, a humane trainer was wounded by a perfectly 
good-tempered lion, and the unfortunate man had to spend 
some time in bed before his wounds were healed. 
This event gave rise to a somewhat ludicrous incident. 
On the day after the accident I received a telegram from 
Myers from Brussels, saying that he wished me to take back 
one of my lions, as it was ill. When the telegram arrived, 
although I still knew nothing about the accident, I did not 
take the statement very seriously. I knew that the lion had 
been in perfect health at the time of delivery, so if anything 
had gone wrong since it must be due to an accident. __I wired, 
therefore, my refusal to take back a lion which had been de- 
livered in good health and for which I had received payment. 
Next day another telegram arrived which ran as follows: 
‘Your lion is dead: what shall I do with him?” To this | 
promptly replied: ‘ Pickle him if you like”. 
A few weeks later, when I had nearly forgotten the whole 
affair, a cask of pickled lion actually arrived in Hamburg for 
me! Probably the stupid fellow thought that by carrying out 
the advice tendered to him in my ironical answer, he would be 
putting himself in the right. Of course I immediately returned 
