20 7710 STRAND N AGAZLINVE.
I
might command its price as an advertisement for the soap. There are other respects n
which the lion compares unfavourably with the tiger. Watch them yawning. Yawning, by-
the-bye, is the only really fashionable amuscment here in the Tion-house- after cating.
Onc of the cheetahs has o wooden ball to play with, but a cheetah is naturally low n his tastes, and even he is ashamed of
! the amuscment, pursuing it by stealth, | : when unobscrved, and
C concealing the ball by Iving before it when visitors arrive s and his mner heart T feel surc he prefers cating--- if not yawning.
I have before now felt suspicious of the cenuine character of some of the yawns here to be mspected. There arc rcally too many of them. It 1s largely a mere posing and show- of. “law, Maria,” says the country cousin, “look at hin a- capin’; what awful teeth 7 and the hon (or tiger as may be) likes ity scizing the first opportunity of gaping again, and extracting more flattery. So that yawning has become a fashionable pursuit.
But there is an inferiority in the hon's vawn. T'he tiger opens his head frankly and fully, baring his gums and exposing his teeth in all their vicious pointedness. It s
a ficrce yawn, a downright yawn, such a vawn as could be no vawn but a tiger's. The lion's might almost be a sheep’s. His heavy lips overhang his gums like those of a toothless old woman. Tt is a mere slovenly, ridiculous yawn, with no terror init. The
lips retract a littde perhaps as the mouth closes, but all the lustre is already gone from out of that yawn.
Anybody who looks at the matter with the least care may sce that o all things the hon
with aridiculous vanity born of having becen called the American llon by some naturalist who should have animals themselves. known Dbetter, rolls The puma here, for 2 among his bed-straw mstance, puffed up L RLnsING T AR until cnough hangs
has been accorded an clevation which 1s not his right. The super stition 1s long a-dving, even among the lower