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world lasts, will always command attention and regard. The tiger is 

 stronger than the lion. I should be sorry to disturb the traditions of 

 childhood which have led any one present to regard the lion as the king 

 of the beasts. I am sorry, however, to say that the lion is a humbug. 

 He has a big mane, and looks grand, but he is very inferior to the tiger. 

 He is like some human beings I am acquainted with — there is more in 

 their appearance than you find carried out on intimate acquaintance. 

 My reason for saying that the tiger is stronger than the lion, is a reason 

 that will interest you. I find that the cruel Emperor Titus, A.D. 80, 

 carried the spectacles in Rome so far as to have Bengal tigers imported 

 from India, and compelled to fight the Numidian lions imported from 

 Africa. In his native haunts in India, the Bengal tiger never meets the 

 African lion. The poor Babylonian lion of Asia is a very small animal 

 compared with the African lion ; and I would back two Newfoundland 

 dogs to fight him. The tiger sometimes meets this lion in the north 

 of India, and it is well known that he destroys him. The Emperor 

 Titus determined to try whether the Bengal tiger could or could not 

 fight the large and noble African lion. The poet Martial, in his i8th 

 epigram, De Spectaculis^ has recorded the fact that tigers and lions 

 fought in the amphitheatre during the reign of Titus, and that the tiger 

 always killed the lion. There are some points of interest in the quota- 

 tion, which I can verify. Martial describes the tiger as naturally a 

 gentle animal, accustomed, he says, to lick the right hand of the keeper 

 that trusted him ; but when he came to Rome, and, as Martial observes, 

 learned bad manners amongst the civilised Romans, he lost his native 

 gentleness, and acquired a degree of ferocity that he never possessed in 

 his native woods. The words he uses are : 



" Lambere securi dextram consueta magistri 



Tigris ab Hyrcano gloria rara jugo 

 Saeva ferum rabida laceravit dente leonem : 



Res nova, non ullis cognita temporibus. 

 Ausa est tale nihil, sylvis dum vixit in altis. 



Post quam inter nos est, plus feritatis habet." 



Accidents have happened, also, in some of our English menageries, 

 where the barrier between the cage of the tiger and the lion has broken 

 down, and the animals have fought. The records of all these cases, I 

 believe, show that the tiger, if in good condition, invariably kills the 

 lion when compelled to fight. But the best proof I can give you of the 

 superiority of the tiger, is an experience of my own. What we learn for 

 ourselves makes a stronger impression upon us than what we read from 

 books. I have been for many years Secretary of the Zoological Gar- 

 dens in Dublin, and have had a large number of tigers and lions under 

 my care. Now, it occasionally happens that with such creatures as 

 these, the claws of the fore paw, from want of natural exercise in 

 scratching trees, like cats, grow into the foot, and cause the animal 



