A friend of mine who, as an Eton boy, used to go to the “Zoo” in the holidays and amuse himself by teasing the captives, was converted to humanitarian principles in a rather curious way. An elk, or some large animal of the ruminant order, whose wrath he had deservedly incurred, _coughed_ on him with such vehemence that he retired from the elk-house covered with a sort of moist bran, and with his top-hat irrevocably damaged. Though at the time this touched his hat rather than his heart, he afterwards came to regard the incident as what is called a “means of grace.” It caused _him_, too, to “ruminate,” and so brought home to him the fact that an elk is “a person.” A pamphlet of mine, issued by the Humanitarian League in 1895, entitled “A Zoophilist at the Zoo,” was the beginning of an agitation which gradually led to a considerable improvement in the housing of the animals, in which discussion the most noteworthy feature was a series of articles contributed to the _Saturday Review_ by Mr. Edmund Selous, and afterwards reprinted by the League. Another subject, debated with much liveliness, was the practice of feeding pythons and other large serpents on living prey--ducks, fowls, rabbits, and even goats being given to the reptiles, to be devoured in a manner which was sickening to witness and almost too loathsome to describe.[35] These exhibitions were open till 1881; then for publicity extreme secrecy was substituted, and all inquiries were met by the stereotyped statement that the use of live prey was confined to cases “where such food was a necessity.” Who feeds slim serpents must himself be slim. The League found the reptile-feeders at Regent’s Park exceedingly slippery to deal with, and it needed long time, and much patience, to bring them to book. In this task, however, I was encouraged by the recollection of a scene which I once witnessed in a crowded railway-carriage, when a large eel had made its escape from a basket which one of my fellow-travellers was holding, and created a mild panic among the company by its convolutions under the seat. An old lady sharply upbraided the owner of the eel, and I was struck by the reasonableness of his reply in rather difficult circumstances, when the eel had repeatedly slipped from his grasp. “Wait a little, mum,” he said, “until he gets a bit dusty”; and the result proved the man to be right. In like manner we waited till the excuses given by the Zoological Society had become very dusty indeed.