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ANALYSES OF BOOKS. 
Upilio Faimali ; Memoir en eines Thier bandigers. Gesammelt 
von Paul Mantegazza.* Leipzig and Heidelberg : C. F. 
Winter. 
Possibly some of our readers may feel surprised that we should 
seleCt the memoirs of a tamer of wild beasts for notice in the 
“Journal of Science.” We trust that the important observa- 
tions in zoology and animal psychology made by our subjeCt will 
fully justify our choice. Upilio Faimali was one of tbe earlier 
of those performers who travel about with caravans of wild 
beasts, and who minister to public curiosity by entering the dens 
of lions, tigers, leopards, &c., engaging in mimic combat with 
these monsters, and compelling them to perform a variety of 
tricks. The taste for these exhibitions Prof. Mantegazza rightly 
pronounces a survival — the last remnant of the taste which led 
the most delicate ladies of Ancient Rome to gloat on the savage 
games of the circus. So far is this instinctive blood-thirstiness 
from being eradicated that nothing save the Law prevents com- 
bats of wild beasts and gladiators from being revived in our 
unco’ good humanitarian and bestiarian England. On reflection 
it does indeed seem strange to see a community suppresing by 
their united aCtion what a majority of them in their hearts ap- 
prove of, and, conversely, compelling by law or custom what they 
individually dislike. Of such aCtion the instances are not few. 
Upilio Faimali was an Italian, — a son of the nation which 
supplies the world with professional athletes. We may ask if 
this aptitude for performances requiring strength and agility 
is not an inheritance of the physical training which for so many 
generations characterised the ancient Romans more than any 
other people of the past or the present ? 
Be this as it may, Faimali was from a very early age distin- 
guished for muscular power, activity, courage, and presence of 
mind. In his eleventh year he obtained an engagement in 
Didier’s circus, and five years afterwards he astonished his em- 
ployer and delighted the public with the equestrian performances 
of an ape which he had trained in secret. From that time his 
rise was rapid, and he soon possessed a menagerie of his own, 
with which he visited the chief cities of the Continent, and was 
everywhere successful. His adventures and his hair-breadth 
escapes we must pass over, mentioning merely that his favourite 
* Upilio Faimali ; Memoirs of a Tamer of Wild Beasts. Collected by 
Paul Mantegazza. 
