THE ODD ORANGE.

Evening Post, Volume LXI, Issue 16, 19 January 1901, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE ODD ORANGE.

The discovery of humour in dumb animals may sometimes owo a little to the observer's imagination^ but Ma-. O'Shea, in' his "Leaves from the Life of. a Special Correspondent," sewns to prove 'his case in an interview between himself and a. , group of jolly elephants. "A young friend," lie says, "asked me to show him the elephants, so wo went with an of oranges, which the lad was to carry. But the moment we reached the stable door the herd scented the fruit and s£t up such a? trumpeting that <W boy dropped the fruit and ran like a seared rabbit." Thero were eight elephants, and! Mr. O'Shea, as he picked up th& oranges, found that he htid. 26. Walking deliberately along the line he gave one to each. When he got to the end' of the narrow stable, he turned and was about to begin distribution again, but sudatenly rejected that if elephant number seven , gaw him give elephant number ei^ht two oranges iv succession, he mig-ht fancy himself cheated and give the distributor a smack with bis proboscis ; so ho returned to the door and began at the other end of the line, as before. Three times he. went down tho line, and then he had* one orange left. Every elephant had his greedy gaze focussed upon that orange. It would have been aa much as a man's life was worth to give it to any one of them. What was he to do? He held it up conspicuously, cooJly peeled; it and ato ib himself. "It was most amusing," he says, "to notice tlie .way those elephants nudged! each other and shook their ponderous sides. They thoroughly entered into thehumour of the thing."