"WILD AND DANGEROUS ANIMALS. 373 



fed from the defendant's butcher shop,^ and of a boar, — the 

 court thinking it "a matter of common experience that a 

 boar, though it be in a sense a domestic animal, is certainly 

 not mansuetcB natures, and that on the slightest provocation 

 it is apt to do such mischief as has happened in this case." ^ 



In an English case it was held that an elephant came in the 

 same category and that the fact that the persons exhibiting 

 it did not know it to be dangerous would not prevent re- 

 covery by one injured. "Unless an animal is brought within 

 one of these descriptions, that is, unless it is shown to be 

 either harmless by its very nature, or to belong to a class that 

 has become so by what may be called cultivation — it falls 

 within the class of animals as to which the rule is that a 

 man who keeps one must take the responsibility of keeping 

 it safe. ... It falls within the class of animals that a man 

 keeps at his peril and which he must prevent from doing 

 injury under any circumstances, unless the person to whom 

 the injury is done brings it on himself." * In a review of 

 this case, it was said : "The Court of Appeal . . . has been 

 a little hard upon the elephant in classing him with the lion, 

 the bear and the wolf, animals enumerated by Lord Hale as 

 beasts feres natura which a man keeps at his peril. . . . The 

 elephant might be supposed to have a record which would 

 entitle him to more favorable consideration. In his wild state 

 he is doubtless not altogether desirable as a companion, but he 

 has been sufficiently tamed to render many services to man 

 and stands in a very different position to animals which are 

 quite irreclaimable. But for the tame elephant of India the 

 Court of Appeal cares nothing. — In England, however do- 

 cile he may be, he is but a specimen of a savage, race and 

 cannot escape the stigma of his past state of wildness. The 

 cow, the horse and the dog have been with us for genera- 

 tions and have so won a character for respectability. In the 



' Manger v. Shipman, 30 Neb. 352. 



'Hennigan v. McVey, 9 Rettie (Sc. Ct. Sess.) 411. 



* Filburn v. Peo. Palace & Aquar. Co., 25 Q. B. D. 258. 



