REMINISCENCES FROM THE MELBOURNE ZOO. 
129 
their caps and parcels as they ran, in a desperate hunt for handkerchiefs 
to wipe their eyes. They did not know that Queenie had a bath at 
the back of her house, and that she had gone from them merely to get 
a liberal supply of this water to pay them in full for their treatment of 
her. A short while afterwards a party of men and women teased her 
similarly on a Sunday afternoon, and she punished them in the same 
way, but this time the victims were not drenched like the boys, for she 
had a small quantity of water in her reservoir, and drew upon this 
internal supply to squirt them. 
OUT ON STRIKE. 
Everybody has heard of how Queenie struck work when she was 
being broken into the plough. It is several years ago now, but up to 
date it has remained completely successful, though there are rumors that 
she will yet have to use her great strength for some other purpose than 
that of carrying half-a-dozen children around on her back. She seems 
to know that she earns her living by these means, however, for she really 
does earn a fair amount of money. On a holiday she will carry as 
many as seven- or eight-hundred children around the ring at twopence 
a head, and on ordinary days she rarely fails to carry a fair number. 
She has no objection to being useful — she strongly objects to being 
ornamental; so as soon as a new drapery is procured for the saddle, she 
watches every opportunity when her keeper is not looking to flick her 
trunk at it and tear it to ribbons. When she has succeeded in reducing 
it to tatters, she is content, and it is of no further interest to her until 
a fresh one is got for decency’s sake. But although she does earn a 
considerable amount of money> she is so strong that she could do the 
work of four horses without exerting any undue strength, and there are 
still intentions of making her use it. Though the first experiment ended 
in failure, perhaps the second will be more successful. 
There is a large cultivation paddock behind the lions’ cages where 
the crops are grown to feed all the corn-eating animals at the Zoo. Here 
one day Queenie was harnessed to a two-furrow plough, and she did 
her work admirably. Naturally, like a sagacious elephant, she minutely 
inspected the impediment chained to her, but if it did not object to its 
rough usage she saw no reason to protest, and so she ploughed up about 
an acre and a half perfectly. Visitors who watched her trial run were 
convinced that an elephant was all the stock-in-trade required to turn 
our virgin lands into profitable wheat belts. There was, however, such 
an air of reserve strength, or of trifling with the subject about her, that 
the authorities decided it was sheer waste of time to make her dawdle 
F 
