A good deal of time is devoted, especially of late years, to the education of animals and birds. The simplest form of training is that which adapts them to our service, and teaches them to recognize and obey the different words of command. Sir Miles Fleetwood would have been poorly off indeed if his horse had not understood the meaning of whoa! and had the discretion to obey it. A London magistrate under James I., he was, according to Aubrey, “a severe hanger of highwaymen, and the fraternity were for revenge.” They caught him riding alone one night, set him on horseback beneath the gallows, with his hands tied behind him, fastened one end of a rope to the gallows’ arm, the other being noosed around his neck, then left him to his fate. “So he cried ‘Ho, Ball! Ho, Ball!’ and it pleased God that his horse stood still until somebody came along, which was a quarter of an hour or more. He ordered that this horse should be kept as long as he should live, which was so; he lived till 1646.” The history of animals abounds in examples of their intelligence and docility; and probably no one who has a favorite animal has failed to notice some such instance for himself. [Illustration: LOVE LEADING THE ORCHESTRA. (_After painting by A. Gill._)] The idea of teaching animals to perform tricks is certainly a very old one. The trained horses, dogs and elephants of our modern circus had their predecessors more than two thousand years ago, in Roman amphitheaters. We learn from historians that, when Tiberius was emperor, his kinsman Germanicus exhibited a play in which the actors were elephants. They were dressed in regular garments, danced, performed various tricks, and finally, at a given signal, seated themselves around a table on couches spread with velvet, and concluded the performance by eating and drinking with perfect propriety. A modern artist has amusingly represented this ancient bit of comedy. Plutarch mentions a trained dog which was exhibited before Vespasian, in the theater of Marcellus, and which won great applause from that jolly emperor. [Illustration: THE ELEPHANTS OF GERMANICUS.] Coming down to the middle of the seventeenth century, we have a print of “The Cat Showman” surrounded by a cat orchestra in a state of high performance; we have also the famous “chestain-coloured naig,” Morocco, which was exhibited in Scotland; and which “being trained up in dancing, and other conceits of that kind, did afford much sport and contentment to the people, but not without gain, for none was admitted to see the dancing without two pence the piece, and some more.” His master Banks, to borrow Anderson’s entertaining account, would ask--