profane custom is gradually ebbing out, and such
a profanation of the name of God seldom passes
the lips of educated men.

PERFORMING ANIMALS.

IT was an amusing study of the writer's
younger days to visit any wonderful exhibition
of learned dogs, acting birds, &c., and to discover
how they were taught. It is merely a work of
time and patience to teach animals various feats
of docility. Some are much more readily trained
than others: especially the horse, the elephant,
the dog, and the monkey. Although harsh treatment,
beating, and half-starving, are too often
resorted to, petting and kindness are more
successful. At all events, a system of rewards for
good behaviour is essential, and is uniformly
practised even when alternated with correction
for failure.

An accurate observer sees that, when horse
apparently keep dancing-time to a band, it is the
music which invariably adapts its time to the
steps of the horse. There is now in the Cirque
Napoléon, in Paris, a large ape admirably trained
to all the various feats of a circus-rider. He
jumps on the horse, and is carried round and
round. He stands on one leg, holding out the
other with his hand, vaults over a riding-whip,
stands on his head, turns somersets, jumps over
garters and through hoops covered with paper, all
in regular sequence as the music changes. In
taking his leaps he sometimes misses the horse in
his descent, and then he runs rapidly after him,
scrambles on the side palisades, and climbs to his
place, keeping, all the time, the most perfect
gravity of demeanour, instead of the grinning,
self-satisfied smiles of his human compeers.
Here, there has been a mixture of petting and
flogging. At any failure, we noticed that poor
Jacko looked frightened, and received a sly cut
of the whip; after a successful feat, he had a
little sweetmeat from the pocket of the master
of the ring.

About forty-five years ago, a learned dog was
exhibited in Piccadilly—Munito, a clever French
poodle, very handsome, with a fine silky white
woolly coat, half-shaved. He performed many
curious feats, answering questions, telling the
hour of the day, the day of the week or date of
the month, and picking out any cards called for
from a pack spread on the ground. At the
corner of the room was a screen, behind which
the dog and his master disappeared between
each feat for a short time. We watched him
narrowly; but it was not until after our second
visit that the mystery was solved. There were
packs of ordinary cards, and other cards with
figures, and others with single letters. One of
the spectators was requested to name a card
—say the queen of clubs — the pack was
spread on the floor in a circle, faces upward.
Munito went round the circle, came to the
queen of clubs, pounced upon it, and brought it
in his mouth to his master. The same process
was repeated with the cards with figures, when
he brought the exact numbers which answered
the questions put as to dates, or days, or hours;
in the same way with the letter cards, when
he picked out the necessary letters to spell any
short word called for, always making a full
circle of the whole of the cards for each letter
or for each number, and never taking up two
letters or two numbers consecutively, though
they might chance to lie close together. This
fact we made out at the first visit, but nothing
more. On the second occasion we watched
more narrowly, and with that object took a side
seat, so that we had a partial view behind the
screen. We then noticed that between each
feat the master gave the dog some small
bits of some sort of food, and that there
was a faint smell of aniseed from that corner
of the room. We noticed that the dog, as
he passed round the circle of cards, with his
nose down and his eyes directed to the ground,
never pounced on the right card as his eyes
covered it, but turned back and picked it
out. It was clear that he chose it by the smell,
and not by that of sight. We recalled that,
each time before the dog began his circuit, the
master arranged and settled the cards, and
we then found that he pressed the fleshy part
of his thumb on the particular card the dog was
to draw, which thumb he previously put into
his waistcoat-pocket for an instant; and as he
passed close to us, his waistcoat had an aniseed
scent. After the performance, we remained
until the room was clear, and then spoke to the
master. He did not deny the discovery of his
principle.

This clue enabled us some few years
afterwards to explain the trick with cards, performed
by a Java sparrow, exhibited along with other
performing birds. The general feats were
common enough, and were obviously the result of
mere training: such as firing a small cannon,
lying as if struck dead, drawing a little carriage
the bird putting its own head through the
collar attached to the shafts, and another bird
acting as coachman, &c.; but the card trick
might have been taken to denote reason on the
bird's part. A dirty pack of cards was handed
to one of the company, who selected a card,
and gave it back to the exhibitor, who shuffled
the pack after replacing the card; he then
put the pack upright in a kind of card-case,
which so held them as to leave about half an inch
above the brim. The Java sparrow hopped on
the card pack, and presently began to peck at
one of the cards, and finally drew out the identical
one that had been drawn. The explanation
became easy on examining the cards. At one
end, each card had a thin layer of sweet-wafer
paste; the selected card was taken by the exhibitor
and placed in the pack; all the rest of the
cards had the paste end downward, while this
card alone was placed back in the pack with the
opposite end upward. And the bird naturally
pecked at that end.

Many people have seen an exhibition of a
learned pig, whose performances were very
similar to those of the learned dog: such as