The story did not make such large demands on credulity as sceptics pretend. The wolf is not so much the natural enemy of man as the cat is of the mouse: yet cats have been known to bring up families of mice or rats which they treated with affection. In recent times a Russian bear was stated to have carried away to the woods a little girl whom it fed with nuts and fruits. The evidence seemed good, though the story did sound a little as if it were suggested by Victor Hugo’s “Épopée du Lion.” But in India there are stories of the same sort—stories actually of She-wolves—which appear to be impossible to set aside. In a paper read before the Bombay Natural History Society, the well-known Parsi scholar, Jivanji Jamsedji Modi, described how he had seen one such “wolf-boy” at the Secundra Orphanage: the boy had remained with wolves up to six years old when he was discovered and captured, not without vigorous opposition from his vulpine protectors. The historical record of Rome as regards animals is not a bright one. The cruelty of the arena does not stain the first Roman annals; the earliest certified instance of wild-beast baiting belongs to 186 B.C., and after the practice was introduced it did not reach at once the monstrous proportions of later times. Still, one does not imagine that the Roman of republican times was very tender-hearted towards animals. Cato related, as if he took a pride in it, that when he was Consul he left his war-horse in Spain to spare the public the cost of its conveyance to Rome. “Whether such things as these,” says Plutarch, who tells the story, “are instances of greatness or littleness of soul, let the reader judge for himself!” When the infatuation for the shows in the arena was at its height, the Romans felt an enormous interest in animals: indeed, there were moments when they thought of nothing else. It was an interest which went along with indifference to their sufferings; it may be said to have been worse than no interest at all, but it existed and to ignore it, as most writers have done, is to make the explicable inexplicable. If the only attraction of these shows had been their cruelty we should have to conclude that the Romans were all afflicted with a rare though not unknown form of insanity. Much the same was true of the gladiatorial shows. Up to a certain point, what led people to them was what leads people to a football match or an assault-at-arms. Beyond that point—well, beyond it there entered the element that makes the tiger in man, but for the most part it was inconscient. [Illustration: LION BEING LED FROM THE ARENA BY A SLAVE. (_Nennig Mosaic._)]