66 
ALMOST HUMAN 
ago a lion and tiger managed to get together in the West Australian 
Zoo, and after a terribly thrilling encounter the lion was killed. So 
that it is by no reason of its superior muscular strength that the lion 
has succeeded in winning the proud and honored title, but some think 
it is because of a certain regal instinct in the lion that is quite absent 
from the tiger’s mental make-up. If the lion makes a spring at an 
intended victim, and misses it, he apparently decides that he must in 
honor give his mark the sporting chance it has gained by his stupidity. 
For a moment or so he will stand watching the fortunate animal, and 
the very tip of his tail will be moving impatiently, clearly displaying 
his deep chagrin. It is the movement we all notice in the cat’s tail 
when the bird or the mouse has been too quick for him. Then, when 
he has finished telling himself what a fool he has been, he will move 
off to stalk down a fresh victim. But the tiger is different. With 
Hunnish determination, he springs to kill, and if his first attempt is a 
failure, he will coldly and remorselessly follow his prey for slaughter, 
and no feelings of compunction or sportsmanship ever disturb his pre- 
destined course. The relentlessness of the tyrant dominates his cruel, 
calculating brain, and this characteristic, so far beneath the high spirited 
nobility of the lion, has cost the tiger the title of “The King of Beasts.” 
So that moral qualities count in the beasts as in man! 
CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. 
Some years ago the staff at the Zoo was busily engaged in the 
never-ending business of ratting, when a small, rough-haired mongrel 
terrier, who had got in without paying, came up to watch the perform- 
ance. As if to show them how it should be done, she took a hand in 
the game, and she was “rough on rats” with a vengeance. So valuable 
was her assistance that she was permanently engaged as a generally useful 
hand on the spot, and although her duties were to range over a very 
wide field, nothing (not even the question of wages, which were some- 
how overlooked), ever interfered with the amicable relations between 
employer and employed until the very end. 
Shortly after MTiizzy signed on in this loose way, she had a litter of 
puppies. Just about that time an even more important birth was 
registered in the Zoo annals — a baby lioness saw the light of day there. 
Then followed a shameless trafficking in babies. No one knows what 
became of the terrier’s own offspring; but the authorities thought that 
a fair exchange was no robbery, so instead of her large small family 
they gave her one big baby to rear. At first she did not see the force 
of it, but she soon resigned herself to the inevitable, and gave her un- 
