VI ANIMAL TRAINING AND INTELLIGENCE 1 85 



lessly returned, alighting on the heads. of the cats. 

 They caught these httle animals, their natural 

 prey, and played with them, holding them in 

 their paws, and even in their teeth, without doing 

 them the slightest injury ; they jumped through 

 a blazing hoop held up by the trainer, made sur- 

 prisingly long leaps over hurdles ; turned summer- 

 saults, and did other gymnastic exercises on the 

 backs of thirty-two chairs placed in a row ; 

 marched around in time to music like little sol- 

 diers, and grouped themselves in many graceful 

 and comical attitudes. In all these capers the 

 pussies, who live a life of royal comfort and in- 

 dulgence, seemed to enjoy themselves as much as 

 if the whole affair were a spontaneous frolic ; 

 but it is noteworthy that these trained cats, while 

 tamed to a very unusual degree by their kind, 

 patient, and persistent master, must be kept strictly 

 captive, since otherwise they would run away 

 upon those nocturnal expeditions in which the 

 house pet becomes once more the wild cat, taking 

 to the roofs and back fences of the city only be- 

 cause there is no jungle convenient ; and M. Bon- 

 netty has lost two or three of his best performers 

 by such escapades. 



Their education and training, after all, is only 

 skin deep — an acquired polish affecting character 

 to only a small degree. This is true of nearly the 

 whole menagerie, which lives at best an artificial 

 life ; and nowadays I rarely go to see it. 



