During a certain period, the elephant had remained with his owner, and the young man, his son, had constantly evinced the greatest kindness towards the animal; but he was at length sold to the government, and his keeper hired to take care of him; deprived of all restraint, and his family no longer present to watch over him, the latter neglected his charge, and when intoxicated, even struck his favourite, for he abandoned himself to the worst habits. The naturally cheerful disposition of the elephant began to alter, and he was thought to be ill; he was still obedient, but his exercises no longer gave him pleasure. He now and then appeared to be impatient, but tried to repress his feelings; the struggle, however, changed him so much, that his keeper became still more dissatisfied with him. Orders had been given to the young man never to beat the elephant, but in vain. Mortified at losing his influence, which daily became less, his own irritability increased; and one day being more unreasonable than ever, he struck the elephant with such brutality, that the beast uttered a furious cry. The frightened keeper fled, and it was well he did so, for from that moment the elephant could not endure the sight of him, becoming violent the moment he appeared; and nothing ever restored the poor animal to his previous good conduct: hatred had succeeded to love, indocility to obedience, and as long as the animal lived these two latter feelings predominated. Mr. Broderip, in his delightful Zoological Recreations, tells us of an elephant which was shewn, among other wild beasts, at a fair in the West of England. One of the spectators gratified the elephant by some excellent gingerbread nuts, in return for which, the animal, unsolicited, performed his tricks. The donor, however, was a practical joker, and when he had gained the confidence of the good-tempered beast, presented him with a large parcel, weighing two or three pounds, which the elephant took unsuspectingly, all at once. He had scarcely swallowed it, however, than he set up a loud roar, and seemed to suffer exceedingly; he gave the bucket to his keeper, as if to ask for water, which was supplied to him most plentifully. "Ho!" said his tormentor, "Those nuts were a trifle hot, old fellow, I guess." "You had better be off," exclaimed the keeper, "unless you want the bucket at your head; and serve you right, too." The elephant drank the sixth bucket full, and then hurled the empty vessel at the head of the man, just as he cleared the entrance of the show, or most probably he would have lost his life. A year after, at the same place, the joker again went to see the elephant, with one pocket full of good nuts, and the other with nuts of pepper. He gave the animal some of the first, and then presented him with one that was hot. The moment the elephant tasted it, he seized the coat tails of the man, and lifted him from the ground, when the cloth