The entire proceeds of the sale were a little under £3,000. The daily cost of the food of the animals in a menagerie is, I may add, far from a trifle. The quantity of hay, cabbages, bread, and boiled rice, sweetened with sugar, which an elephant will consume, in addition to the fruit, buns, and biscuits given to him by visitors, is enormous. The amount of animal food for the carnivora in Fairgrieve’s menagerie was about four hundred-weight a day, consisting chiefly of the shins, hearts, and heads of bullocks. Each lion is said to have consumed twelve pounds of meat every day; but this is more, I believe, than is allowed in the Gardens of the Zoological Society. The appetite of the tiger is almost equal to that of his leonine relative; and all these beasts seem to insist upon having beef for dinner. We hear nothing of hippophagy among lions and tigers in a state of confinement; though, in their native jungles, they eat horse, pig, deer, antelope, sheep, or goat indiscriminately. The bears get meat only in very cold weather; at other seasons, their diet consists of bread, sopped biscuits, and boiled rice. CHAPTER XVIII. Circus Slang—Its Peculiarities and Derivation—Certain Phrases used by others of the Amusing Classes—Technicalities of the Circus—The Riders and Clowns of Dickens—Sleary’s Circus—Circus Men and Women in Fiction and in Real Life—Domestic Habits of Circus People—Dress and Manners—The Professional Quarter of the Metropolis. Circus men are much addicted to the use of slang, and much of their slang is peculiar to themselves. To those who are uninitiated in the mysteries of life among what may be termed the amusing classes, the greater part of their vocabulary would seem an unknown tongue; but a distinction must be made between slang words and phrases and the technical terms used in the profession, and also between the forms of expression peculiar to circus men and those which they use in common with members of the theatrical and musical professions. These distinctions being duly observed, the words and phrases which are peculiar to the ring will be found to be less numerous than might be expected from the abundance of slang with which the conversation of circus _artistes_ seems to be garnished; though it is probable that no man, not even a circus man, could give a complete vocabulary of circus slang, which, like that of other slang-speaking classes, is constantly receiving additions, while words and phrases which have been long in use often become obsolete, and fall into disuse.