Above the leopard house is the museum, where past tenants of the Belle Vue cages find a resting-place--among others, the great elephant Maharajah, the chimpanzees, and the great orang, with his arms 7 feet 6 inches in stretch, which was exhibited in the Gardens in the summer of 1899. Housed in the same building are the live snakes and saurians, the finest specimen a reticulated python 27 feet in length. The accommodation is, however, judged insufficient, and a reptile house is in contemplation. Amongst exciting and amusing incidents the following have occurred in the Gardens: One summer midnight, about twenty-five years ago, a cage-door was left open, and a lioness escaped into the grounds. The keeper was informed, and saw her lying by the back door of the house. He immediately went to her den, where she had two cubs lying, and, taking one under each arm, walked up to her, and so persuaded her to follow him back to the den. This keeper (Thomas Day by name) had been a tamer, and in his early days at Wombwell’s had performed before the Royal Family at Balmoral. Earlier still, probably in the fifties, a leopard escaped from its cage. Mrs. Jennison, senior, wife of the founder, happened to be passing, and courageously went into the house, and with her apron ‘shooed’ the animal, as though it had been a hen and chickens, straight back into its cage, where she fastened it up. In the very early days, when Belle Vue was in the country and our enclosures were less perfect, it was a common thing for the countryside to turn out for a red-deer chase after an escape from the Gardens. These things do not happen now, as there is a 12-feet high wall all round the 80 acres. A sea-lion did once get as far as the exit, some 300 yards from its cage. When diving from a high platform his impetus gave him his freedom. When that escape was blocked he showed wonderful climbing powers, getting over a barrier 6 feet high by using a corner. However, his keeper stopped him finally, and turned his powers to proper uses by adding the climbing of a pole to his other tricks. He managed 6 feet. One other incident for a close. Three black-backed jackals (two of which are still alive) were caged at the Longsight end of the Gardens. Their cage-door was left open in October, 1900; they got out, traversed the whole length of the Gardens, and went out by the Lake Hotel exit. They were seen some 200 yards away outside, playing together. They returned towards the Gardens; one was headed off by some boys, the other two entered as they had left (by the exit at the extreme end of the large lake), and, retraversing the Gardens, returned unmolested to their cage. (The third was afterwards caught and returned to the Gardens.) The above is so curious that it is perhaps as well that the event is recent enough to be capable of very full proof. An extract from the _Manchester Guardian_ of June 1, 1901, will form a fitting termination to this short account of Belle Vue: