Nature. REVENGE BY PROXY.

Waikato Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1568, 22 July 1882, Page 6

Nature. REVENGE BY PROXY.

Intelligent animals rarely resonfc the severity of a trainer who once bas made then feel his power ; but that their forbearance must require a great deal of self-control is proved by the fact that they sometimes revenge themselves upon a proxy of the tyrant, — his friend or a favourite pet. After a knout-drill some hunting-dogs have an ugly way of failing upon their coim tides, or even upon their own puppies, resolved to " take it out" of somebody. Sick horses often kick the stable-boy by way of getting even with the farrier ; and I remember an amusing instance of an animals, appeal the code of the lex talionis. During the winter season the Botanic Garden of Brussels is used by trie proprietors of various peripatetic menageries as a Zoological depot, where'the caged ' travellers can recuperate and enjoy the hospitality of the city on condition of exhibiting 'their charms gratis. Siclc animals often stay the year round J and a few years ago the managers took charge of a Baby elephant whose constitution' had' 1 all but 1 succumbed to tlio rigors' of ' the climate. In the coitrse' of ' tlfe summtir-j* however/ Micheline got 'oh her 'legs "again/— so touch 1 / ■< indeed.' as to 1 become 1 positively'* rampant/ especially 1 ' wheri'heVkeeper iudulged fier in'-'ati'ouV, door ramble*. On account of the supposed ' f sensitiveness of her ' lungs/^he^jwore^a ' woollejf' cotM'etttte',. to which for some reasons .or' other ->,'-< ", <' , '-■>?." , n \"T Is

she held takensucha fancy that she would .lead just it herself whenever it slipped down. But one morning she sanutcied toward an open "gate where the laborers had unloaded two big vats full of pickerel spawn, and, finding the mixture pleasantly cool, she upset one of the vats and began to welter like a pig in a puddle She had just upset the second tub when the enraged gate-keeper fell upon her with a cow-hide, and, after belaboring her till her grunts changed into pitiful squeals, he snatched away the soiled courette and dismissed the culpiit with a fifty-pound kick. Michcline had not offered the least resistance, but when she walked away she uttered a series of peculiar gutturals, sounding almost like muttered threats. She walked toward the orangery, and one of the gardeners who had watched the lumpus from a window of his lodge then became the witness of a curious scene. In the orangery the gate-keeper's children were at play among the tiees, and, without tlio least provocation on their part, Michcline suddenly charged them, and singling out the biggest boy, began to thrash him -with her trunk just as the old man had thrashed her with his cow-hide. After dodging left and right between the bushes, the little lad ran screaming towaid the gate ; but the superior speed of his pursuer obliged him to take refuge on a tree, and he could clamber out of the icach Michelinc grabbed his breeches — a worn out pair, jerk. When the pitchfork brigade rushed to the rescue, she was strutting up and down with her trunk proudly aloft, waving the ipolia opuna over her head . — Exchange.

"I am afraid, dear wife, that while I am gone absence will conquer love. ''Oh never fear, dear husband ; the longer you stay away the better I shall like you."