It is one feature in exciting exhibitions that if men are attractive when placing themselves in much peril, the so-called pleasure is enhanced when women are the possible victims. As it is in _trapèze_ and acrobatic performances, so is it in those connected with the exhibition of wild or semi-wild animals. It is among the gossip of the theatres that one visitor attended night after night, in order that he might not be absent when Van Amburgh's head was bitten off (as many expected it would be) by a lion; and so the idea that something fatal might happen to one of the gentler sex lends an additionally unhealthy interest to the scenes we are now considering. As soon as lion-king exhibitions were found to be profitable, the proprietor of Hilton's Menagerie bethought him of bringing forward his niece as a lion-queen; he paid her well, the public paid him well, and thus an impetus was given to a new kind of speculation. A rival soon appeared at another circus or place of exhibition, and two lion-queens were starring before the public at one time. A third aspirant tried the enterprise once too often. Miss Blight, daughter of a member of Wombwell's band, was one evening in 1850 managing a performance of trained animals at a fair. One of the tigers was sullen and wayward; she incautiously struck him with a whip; the animal sprang at her, seized her by the throat, and put an end to her hapless existence before effective aid could arrive. The authorities prohibited such exhibitions after this melancholy catastrophe. Yet such is the contagion of ambition and love of a good salary, that other women were willing to offer their services as successor to the poor girl. A very tame lion was at another menagerie taken out of his cage and taught to crouch at the feet of a lady who personated Britannia. Some of the animals thus exhibited are rather valuable. When a menagerie was sold by auction at Edinburgh in 1872, the lions brought individually eighty pounds, ninety pounds, one hundred pounds, one hundred and forty pounds, two hundred pounds, and one as much as two hundred and seventy pounds. One of these had performed with Lorenzo in the spectacle of Androcles. The highest-priced lion was purchased for the Bristol Zoological Gardens; he was regarded as the largest and finest at that time in England. A magnificent tigress was an object of eager competition; and an unusually fine elephant--very much renowned as a 'performing' elephant--brought six hundred pounds. Another menagerie was sold by auction in London more recently; the chief interest centred around two lion-cubs born in the menagerie eighteen months previously; they brought one hundred and fifty pounds. * * * * * Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH. * * * * * _All Rights Reserved._