TRAINING WILD ANIMALS 143 
seven animals had been placed together at so early an age that 
they knew nothing of life apart from each other’s society. By 
this early and intimate association, the animals which live in 
nature in the most extreme hostility may be bred up as bosom 
friends. The lion and the lamb lying down together is no 
mere fable, though it can only be achieved by long and careful 
training. In the wild state, the lion looks upon the ox as his 
normal food, and his whole nature has to be changed if he is to 
be taught to treat it as a friend. The peace-loving goat which 
feeds on vegetables has to be profoundly altered in constitu- 
tion before he can be persuaded to make friends with the blood- 
thirsty tiger, whose very odour is ordinarily sufficient to terrify 
him. The panther and the sheep may be brought up as play- 
fellows, the one forgetting its savage instincts and the other 
its fears. It is entirely due to the humane system of training 
that this triumph is due. My first experiment in this line was 
made in the summer of 1889. I had then already succeeded 
in accustoming to one another two tigers, two lions, two black 
and two ordinary panthers, three Angora goats, two black- 
headed Somali sheep, an Indian dwarf zebu, a Shetland pony 
and two poodles. Of course, the training began when they 
were all quite young, mostly at about six or eight months. 
This troupe was almost ready to be exhibited, when a mis- 
fortune very nearly brought the whole work to nothing. The 
carnivores were attacked by the cholera epidemic, previously 
described, and most of them died. The few that I was able 
to send to the Chicago Exhibition were not sufficient for 
producing any of these greater effects. 
- I have, however, not lost sight of these experiments, and 
am confident that the most jarring elements of the animal 
kingdom may be united to a degree not yet dreamt of by the 
general public. I should not begin to boast before I have 
succeeded; but I may say that I hope very shortly to place 
before the public some exhibitions of this kind which will throw 
all previous ventures into the shade. 
There is practically no animal which by the exercise of 
