About sixty years ago, when Ballard's Menagerie was halting on the road one night near Salisbury, a lioness escaped from one of the caravans, and before she could be recaptured, attacked and tore one of the horses of the Exeter mail; but she _was_ recaptured nevertheless, by the coolness and daring of the keepers. Soon after this, Ducrow, the accomplished equestrian, engaged Atkins's lion, tigress, and hybrid cubs as an additional attraction to his circus. This achievement of rearing the progeny of a lion and tigress was much talked of at the time. The novel family were exhibited before royalty at Windsor Castle, and then at Bartholomew Fair; where a keeper lay down in the den, with the lion on one side, the tigress on the other, and the cubs disporting near him, ending by lying down on the lion, with the tigress lying on the man. The next excitement of the kind, which from its cruelty could not be endured now-a-days, was connected with the once-renowned _Nero_ and _Wallace_. Wombwell advertised, when his menagerie was at Warwick, a combat between his lion Nero and six bull-dogs. It was a poor tame affair, for none of the animals shewed any desire for the encounter. A second attempt, with Wallace, gave rise to more of that morbid excitement for which such exhibitions are got up; the lion killed or disabled all the dogs, the last of which he carried about in his mouth as a rat is by a terrier or a cat. The affair brought money for a time, and then gave place to other sensational exhibitions. A trainer and performer known as 'Manchester Jack' was wont, at Bartholomew Fair, to take visitors with him into Nero's cage; many persons invested sixpence each in this risky adventure; but the poor beast had had his native spirit so quelled that the danger was perhaps not much after all. This Manchester Jack was rather a notable fellow in the profession; he trained Wombwell's lions to suffer him to sit upon them, keep their mouths wide open, &c. The newspapers more than once announced his death as a victim of some savage animal; but he belied them all, and died quietly in his bed as a taverner--notwithstanding that he had been credited by one paragraphist with having had his head bitten off by a lion.