The captain of the vessel which had brought Chung over, came in during the contest between the man and the elephant. He had become fond of the beast, and often fed it with dainties. The animal had scarcely recognized its friend when it approached him with a supplicating air, gently took his hand in its trunk and placed it in the bleeding wound, then held the hand up to the captain’s eyes. The gesture [p126] said as clearly as words: “See how they have made me suffer!”
Poor Chung appeared so unhappy that every one was touched, even the cruel keeper. To win pardon the man ran out and bought some apples, which he offered to the elephant. But Chung disdainfully threw them away. The captain, who had also fetched some fruit from Covent Garden Market, came back immediately afterwards and held it out to Chung. He willingly accepted it, and after eating it, coiled his trunk gently round his protector’s waist.
Since no one has yet succeeded in exhibiting a learned whale, the elephant is the largest animal that has been taught obedience to man. Chung’s adventures would therefore seem a fitting close to this monograph on training.
Yet I wish to crown this chapter by an account of the training of an animal of very different size—the cat. And although this sequence may seem curious to you, it is chosen for at least two reasons; first, that the appearance of a trained domestic cat is the latest achievement of the trainer’s art; and secondly, that I am not sure whether the conquest of the cat is a triumph of training or of taming. There is, in fact, as much ground for regarding the cat as a wild beast, as for considering it a domestic animal.
Hitherto we have believed, on the authority of M. de Buffon, the systematic detractor of the cat, that it was an untamable animal. The great naturalist states that “it will not allow any one to influence its idle, thieving instincts.”
The cat has waited for nearly a century, but at last this slander can be refuted; its falsehood is clearly proved.
Nearly twenty years ago a child was born in a Dutch [p127] village, who, from an early age, showed unusual skill in taming and training animals.
When the youth was seventeen—his name is Bonnetty—he introduced learned rabbits, hares, and guinea pigs, into the arena, so wonderfully trained that even the Dutch, who are not, as a rule, easy to move, were much astonished. However Bonnetty was not going to stop yet. Tempted by the great difficulty of the feat, he determined to prove that M. de Buffon was unjust to the cat, and with rare patience he devoted himself to the education of that animal.
He chose two subjects, both Dutch, like himself, cats from Hooren—M. Bonnetty had remarked, after much [p128] observation, that the cats from that district are particularly docile—and he spent some months in training them; then one by one he added comrades to them, until he had twenty; the instinct of imitation assisted the later recruits to learn more rapidly.