playful, with its claw at the tamer. A young lioness did this two or three years ago to Mr. Cooper, and laid his left arm bare of flesh for nearly a foot. This was after the tamer's nominal retirement, at a performance—in France—such as he gives now and again, because he likes it. It was only a single tap of this kind from a tiger which killed poor Miss Blight, at Chatham, and the wound which caused her death was only a scratch; but that scratch was in the neck, and severed the jugular vein.
"He dances to music."
Mr. Cooper has tamed and trained not very many under two thousand animals of the feline tribe alone. In elephants his experience has been large. He was the first tamer to give a performance with a whole troop of elephants at once. Nobody had ever performed with more than two elephants before, and this even was generally considered one too many. So that when Cooper clubbed with Mr. Myers and bought six, with the intention of training them to perform altogether, other experienced tamers laughed at the idea. Nevertheless, in six weeks the performance took place with perfect success. The training of an elephant is a thing involving heavy manual labour—it is no light task to push and haul an elephant about till he dances to music or rides a tricycle. And then, although when properly used the animals become, as a rule, very tractable, it impossible to predict when an elephant may take a fit of savagery; when he does, with his enormous stamping feet, his active trunk and his sharp tusks, he is a very unpleasant companion. One of the Wombwells was killed at Coventry by an elephant's tusk, just a year before Miss Blight's death at Chatham. Mr. Cooper's favourite elephant was "Blind Billy," the largest beast ever tamed, and, though totally blind, the cleverest in the troop of eight with which, in 1876, Mr. Cooper used to perform. Billy would pick Mr. Cooper up by the waist and place him astride his forehead and the root of his trunk; he would also stand patiently still while his master's entire head and shoulders were inserted in his mouth, and when not busy himself was useful in keeping the others in order. The extraordinary gambols of these others—dancing on their forelegs with their hind feet in the air, walking on rolling barrels, and so forth, had to be seen to be properly appreciated. Green stuff is, of course, an elephant's chief food, and that is measured to him by the hundredweight. Still, an elephant is never particular. In 1876, during the Crystal Palace performances, one of Mr. Cooper's grooms missed a suit of clothes, a pocketful of small change, an ounce of tobacco, and a cigar-holder. He complained of the theft, and mentioned his suspicions of more than one person. It was discovered, however, that the big elephant Betsy, rummaging about one day in search of a snack, had swallowed the lot.
