to carts, but the attempt can never succeed; for a dog thus employed will always be a very indifferent donkey, and never a good dog. In Paris, again, the other day a man demoralized all his bees by bringing their hives into the city and putting them down next a sugar warehouse. The bees, hitherto as pure-minded and upright insects as one could have wished to meet in a summer’s day, developed at once an unnatural aversion to labor, and a not less unnatural tendency to larceny. Instead of winging their industrious way to the distant clover-fields, and there gathering the innocent honey, they swarmed in disorderly mobs upon the sugar casks next door, and crawled about with their ill-gotten burdens upon the surrounding pavement. The owner of the hives benefited immensely by the proximity of the saccharine deposits, but it was at the sacrifice of all moral tone in the bees which he had tempted and which had fallen.
We never tire of protesting against the unnatural relations of lion and lion-tamer, and of reminding the keepers of menageries that instinct is irrepressible, untamable, and immortal; and every now and then a lion, tired of foolery, knocks a man into mummy. The narrative is always the same, whether it happens at San Francisco or at Birmingham. A lion’s keeper goes into the beast’s cage to clean it, and having, as he supposed, seen all the occupants safely out, sets to work. As it happens, however, the sliding door which divides the two compartments of the cage has not fallen securely into its place, and an old lion, seeing his opportunity, springs at the opening. The door gives way, and the next instant the beast has seized his keeper. A number of people, powerless of course to give assistance, are looking on ; but fortunately there is also present some pro-
