HAMLYN'S MENAGERIE MAGAZINE. 
29 
the picture this year depicts "somewhere" in 
Flanders. The artists, Mr. B. Haistain and Mr. 
C. Caney, have, it can be said straightaway, 
added one more triumph lio their series of tab- 
leaux,. In the foreground they depict a typical 
Flemish town as it appears after a ruthless bom- 
bardment. Flanked on one side by an old-fashioned 
inn, in use as a hospital, and on the other by a 
convent — bc«;h of the buildings damaged by shell- 
fire^ — there is the half-ruined town, with its shat- 
tered walls and roofless houses. Through it runs 
a winding river spanned by a stone bridge. Be- 
yond stretches the country, a wonderful bifc of 
perspective work which gives the idea of a vast 
landscape reaching out to the horizon. So ap- 
pears the picture ere the firework time begins. 
Then >the Germans are shown in possession of the 
town, the near outskirts protected by trenches 
and wire entanglements. The British attack, are 
repulsed; but, reinforced, they return to the fray, 
stofm the town, and cause the enemy to retreat 
pell-mell. Following the battle, quite a realistic 
affair, the display concludes with the exhibition 
of a set of large, coloured transparencies illustra- 
tive of types of soldiers of the Allied armies. Rus- 
sia and Servia form one side, Italy and Montene- 
gro the other, while the centre-piece represents 
France, Britain and Belgium. 
Not the least pleasant features of the Gardens 
are the lawns and flower beds, avenues of trees, 
and conservatories, all at their best at this season. 
Then there are the various amusements prominent 
among them the ample facilities for dancing and 
boating, ever sources of joy to the visitor, old 
and young alike. 
TIGERS. 
By F. C. B. Rowden. 
The Tiger is not such a ferocious and blood- 
thirsty an animal as many may imagine. I am 
not referring to ihe dreaded man-eaters, but to the 
ordinary Tiger. Nor is it like its cousin, the 
Puma, who kills in its native wilds for killing 
sake, pulling down its game and leaving it un- 
eaten. In fact the Tiger is blessed with a craven 
kind of spirit and would far prefer to shrink away 
from the hunters in its jungles than to show fight. 
What makes it difficult to work Tigers in menag- 
eries is that Nature has endowed these animals 
with an ungovernable temper, and anything, the 
stormy weather, for instance, I should fancy, 
would convert it into a most savage and unsafe 
animal for the time being. This is, in mv opinion, 
why we meet with few performing Tigers com- 
pared with the many groups of educated Lions. 
If it was not for this uncertain temper, which 
makes it dangerous for trainers, fche Tiger would 
be quite an easy an animal to tame and to per- 
form with as the Lion or any other large species 
of the carnivora family. 
Writers on Natural History have staged that 
the Tigeress is inhuman to' her 1 young, and that 
when the hunters are about, the Tigeress very 
often when her cubs are full grown, make them 
go in front of her so as to' trick the men intoi the 
belief that one of them is her and so save her 
own skin. I happened to make the acquaintance 
of a Missionary, who was also a naturalist, at 
Wombwell's Menagerie, and asked his opinion — > 
he had spent many years in India — and he told 
me that the Tigeress was< one of 'the most devoted 
of mothers, and that the reason she had them pre- 
cede her was for the same reason that school- 
mistresses when out with their scholars for a walk 
always make them walk in front so that they can 
protect them better from any approaching dan- 
ger. 
Of tame Tigers in menageries I can speak 
from facts. Mr. John Cooper, England's great- 
est animal trainer, and whose portrait graces the 
handsome band car of Wombwell's Menagerie, 
on the second day that I made his acquaintance 
was in the cag'e with two Tigers, which had only 
arrived in that show the previous day. 
I do not think that I ever saw a tamer Tiger 
than one, a handsome full-grown Tiger, which 
was in! a show in the Midlands during the eighties 
of the last century. lie was ehibited in a large 
combination show of circus and menagerie simi- 
lar to that of the famous Barnum and Bailey's 
"Greatest Show on Earth," but, of course, of a 
very inferior size to thai: 1 mammoth establishment. 
This Tiger which shared a cage with a very spite- 
ful Lion, was decorated with a collar round its 
neck. A young lady, either a New Zealandcr or 
an Australian trainer, I believe,, however, of the 
first-named country, entered intb the cage and 
fastened a steel chain to the collar, whilst a col- 
oured trainer backed an elephant ag'ainst the door 
of the cage, on to tfie back of which the Tiger 
sprang, and with the Tiger sitting on its haunches 
in front of him, the trainer holding the chain, 
the elephant perambulated amongsM the people as- 
sembled inside the menagerie. The elephant was 
afterwards taken back to the cage, where the 
fearless lady who had waited in the cage with her 
savage companion, the Lion, which had been 
snarling without any intermission from the corner 
of the cage at her, took off the chain from the 
Tiger. It is regrettable to mention that after only 
about a monjth's time from then, the coloured 
trainer, a man deeply pitted from small pox, met 
with a most tragic end. It had been snowing 
heavily during the day, and he entered a cage of 
wolves and bears, without taking (the precaution 
of removing off the heels of his boots the hard 
snow which had balled on them. As the snow 
