114 
ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 
hand. Although I may touch them seldom, yet 
I sense them as a sweet influence, a hovering 
presence like the air. In my thoughts they 
are one with everything beautiful,—sunlight, 
youth, spring blossoms and the laughter of little 
children. 
When I was ten years old, Mr. William Wade 
of Oakmont, Pennsylvania, presented me with a 
beautiful pony. I had just read “Black Beauty,” 
which had been put into raised print, and of 
course I named the pony Black Beauty. I 
learned afterwards that he was not black, but 
that did not matter a whit. Our negro cook’s 
little girl’s name was Idly, and nobody ob¬ 
jected. 
To this day I tremble when I recall Black 
Beauty’s pranks. He knew that I could not 
see, and he took advantage of me in every 
imaginable way. When I was on his back, 
he did exactly as he pleased if some grown-up 
person was not near to discipline him. He would 
stop to eat grass by the roadside, or rear up on 
his hind legs to snatch a pear or an apple from 
a tree, nearly pitching me out of the saddle. 
Indeed, I stayed on only by clinging desperately 
to his mane. He seemed to think I was bent 
on breaking my neck, and he aided and abetted 
me to the utmost of his ingenuity. Nevertheless, 
we were great pals, and I loved him passionately. 
Black Beauty was kept in a paddock, which 
was surrounded by a wire fence, and entered 
through a high gate. I would find my way to 
the gate with sugar, but I could not reach the 
bolt that secured it. Black Beauty was crazy 
for the sugar. He would sniff at it greedily, I 
would push my hand through the bars, and he 
would take the sugar and gallop away. One 
day I thought I would tease him. Every time 
he reached for the sugar, I pulled my hand 
back. He nosed the gate impatiently, stood up 
on his hind legs to bite the handle of the wooden 
bar, and finally jerked it up and down. He re¬ 
peated this biting and jerking of the handle 
until the bar slid out, and the gate swung open. 
After that it was almost impossible to keep him 
in the paddock. His cleverness and initiative 
usually enabled him to find a way through al¬ 
most any barricade. 
I cannot leave the subject of my childhood 
pets without a word about Neddv, my wee 
donkey friend. I think he had lived many 
years before he Came to me. At any rate he 
seemed to take life philosophically. He sub¬ 
dued himself to its restraints without protest. 
He was more interested in something to eat 
than in making progress. It made no difference 
to him how long it took to go from one point to 
another, and sometimes he remained deaf to all 
entreaties to proceed. He viewed the birch 
switches we cut by the roadside unperturbed. 
I never knew him to harbor a feeling of resent¬ 
ment or to complain about anything. Sometimes 
I thought I detected a shade of dejection in the 
droop of his long ears when he saw a tomato 
can on the other side of a wire fence, obviously 
out of reach. 
One day my. baby sister was riding behind 
me on Neddy’s back. Suddenly, in the middle 
of the muddy lane, Neddy made a queer, buck¬ 
ing movement with his hind legs, which caused 
the baby to slip off. I knew she was sprawling 
in the mud and yelling, but the donkey refused 
to stop, though I jerked the reins with all my 
strength. He held his head down and kept 
on his way resistless as fate itself. 
Neddy was kept in the paddock with Black 
Beauty. He paid not the slightest attention to 
his handsome companion in captivity. Black 
Beauty, on the other hand, conceived a half- 
humorous contempt for Neddy. He would dash 
up to the donkey, give him a quick nip and 
gallop off to a distance, where he waited for 
another opportunity to steal upon his stolid 
victim. Only once in years did Neddv “get his 
Jim Crow up” to the fighting pitch. Then he 
made his heels felt in a way that Black Beauty 
did not soon forget. That one supreme kick 
made him a sadder and wiser pony. 
To the grown-up mind it may seem a long 
way from a donkey to a butterfly, but to the 
eager mind of a child it may be but a single 
step, just as Wonderland seemed to Alice only 
a step from home. I imagine God is as much 
interested in that tiny being composed of one 
cell called the amoeba as in the kitten and the 
bird which have countless millions of cells to 
perform the various functions of their bodies. 
Even this speck of life is immortal in the scien¬ 
tific sense, for it will live as long as the earth 
continues to support life. 
Nothing I learned about living things as a 
child excited my imagination so profoundly as 
the metamorphosis of a butterfly,—-first an egg, 
then a caterpillar, then a motionless, mummv- 
like form, then a winged creature. I watched 
the process from day to day with delighted 
wonder. Never shall I forget the thrill of in¬ 
tense excitement that shot through my body 
when I found the cocoon empty, and the butter¬ 
fly drying its wings on a bunch of trailing ar¬ 
butus in the May sunshine! It looked at the 
great, bright world with the velvety eyes which 
adorned its wings, and seemed contented with 
its bed of flowers. I took it lightly on my palm, 
