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Inquiries into Human Faculty
beautiful wings. It was a splendid menagerie, and all the work of his own hands. The
names of the animals were placed beside them.”
[Rome.]—The extravagant demands for the amphitheatre of ancient
Rome must have stimulated the capture of wild animals in Asia, Africa,
and the then wild parts of Europe, to an extraordinary extent. I will quote
one instance from Gibbon:
“By the order of Probus, a vast quantity of large trees torn up by the roots were
transplanted into the midst of the circus. The spacious and shady forest was immediately
filled with a thousand ostriches, a thousand stags, a thousand fallow-deer, and a thousand
wild boars, and all this variety of game was abandoned to the riotous impetuosity of the
multitude. The tragedy of the succeeding day consisted in the massacre of a hundred lions,
an equal number of lionesses, two hundred leopards, and three hundred bears.”
Farther on we read of a spectacle by the younger Gordian of “twenty
zebras, ten elks, ten giraffes, thirty African hyenas, ten Indian tigers, a
rhinoceros, an hippopotamus, and thirty-two elephants.”
[Mexico.]—Gomara, the friend and executor of Herman Cortes, states
“There were here also many cages made of stout beams, in some of which there were
lions (pumas); in others, tigers (jaguars); in others, ounces;
in others, wolves; nor was
there any animal on four legs that was not there. They had for their rations deer and other
animals of the chase. There were also kept in large jars or tanks, snakes, alligators, and
lizards. In another court there were cages containing every kind of birds of prey, such as
vultures, a dozen sorts of falcons and hawks, eagles, and owls. The large eagles received
turkeys for their food. Our Spaniards were astonished at seeing such a diversity of birds
and beasts; nor did they find it pleasant to hear the hissing of the poisonous snakes, the
roaring of the lions, the shrill cries of the wolves, nor the groans of the other animals given
to them for food.”
[Peru.]—Garcilasso de la Vega (Commentarios Reales, v. 1 o), the son
of a Spanish conqueror by an Indian princess, born and bred in Peru,
writes
“All the strange birds and beasts which the chiefs presented to the Inca were kept at
court, both for grandeur and also to
