184 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 fallowdeer, 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
