This lamentable affair caused an outcry to be raised against the exhibition of performing lions such as had been heard a few years previously against such feats as those of Blondin and Leotard. ‘The display of wild animals in a menagerie,’ said a London morning journalist, ‘may be tolerated, and even encouraged for the sake of science, and for the rational amusement of the public; but there is no analogy between the case of beasts secured in strong dens, and approached only with the greatest caution by wary and experienced keepers, and that of a caravan open on all sides, illuminated by flaring gas, and surrounded by a noisy audience.’ The distinction is one without a difference, even if we suppose that the writer mentally restricted the term ‘menagerie’ to the Zoological Gardens; for the proprietor of a travelling menagerie, or a circus, consults his own interests, as well as the safety of the public, in providing strong cages, and engaging wary and experienced keepers. It is childish to talk of prohibiting every performance or exhibition from which an accident has resulted. Some years ago, one of the keepers of the Zoological Gardens in the Regent’s Park, being somewhat intoxicated, chose to irritate a hooded snake, which thereupon seized him by the nose. He died within an hour. Would the journalist who proposed to exclude lion-tamers from menageries and circuses close the Zoological Gardens on that account? ‘The caravans,’ continues the author of the article just quoted, ‘are tenanted by wild beasts weary with previous performances, irritated by the heat and the clamour around them, and teased by being obliged to perform tricks at the bidding of a man whom they hate, since his mandates are generally seconded by the blows of a whip or the searing of a branding-iron. Now and again, in a well-ordered zoological collection, some lazy, drowsy old lion, who passes the major part of his time in a corner of his den, blinking at the sunshine, and who is cloyed with abundant meals, and surfeited with cakes and sweetmeats, may exhibit passable good-nature, and allow his keeper to take liberties; but such placability can rarely be expected from animals moved continually from place to place, and ceaselessly pestered into going through movements which they detest. Lions or tigers may have the cunning of that feline race to which they pertain; yet they are assuredly destitute of the docility, the intelligence, or the fidelity of the dog or the horse; and such cunning as they possess will prompt them rather to elude performance of the tasks assigned them, or to fall upon their instructor unawares and rend him, than to go through their feats with the cheerful obedience manifested by creatures friendly to man. It is no secret that the customary method of taming wild beasts for purposes of exhibition is, to thrash them with gutta percha whips and iron bars, and when it is considered necessary, to scarify them with red-hot pokers.’