Apropos of performing animals; which seem to have taken a new lease of popularity at the London variety theatres, it is, perhaps, not generally known that the back somersault is the most difficult feat yet achieved in the training of dogs. involves so much time and patience, in fact, that nearly all the " professors" buy the canine somersaulters ready trained from specialists who devote their lives to this peculiar form of industry. Atteston, of London, the best known and most success fal of these trainers, proceeds as follows. He selects a small active dog, strong in the hind quarters and a good jumper, and pass-a cord about two yards long round, the body, just behind the shoulders, leaving an equal length of cord at each end. The dog is then placed on a mattress or soft carpet, an assistant takes one end of the cord and the trainer the other, in the left hand, the dog's head being turned towards the trainer's right hand, in which a wand. ix held. The trainer begins by urging the dog to jump over the wand. As soon as the front paws touch the wand, the cord is pulled taut from both ends and the trainer thrusts the upper part of the dog's body back with the wand. At the same instant the assistant gives a forward impulsion to the dog's bind quarters, so that the pupi turns in the air with the cord as pivot. As soon as the dog sees the ground under h ho completes the turn by insti bringing his fect together and falling en them. At a later period of his training, i.e., when he begins to jump without the support of the cord, he falls on his back, "After several weeks' further practice, he Jearns to place his hind legs beneath the centre of his body, spring up, turn in the air and fall on his feet. It goos without say is requires the utmost patience and gentleness on the part of the trainer; otherwise, the repeated falls would discourage the dog so much that it would be impossible to do anything with him, The trick is rarely acquired in less than four months. _M. Hachet-Sonplet, a well-known French zoologist. and_littérateur, to whom I am indebted for the foregoing details, says no one has ever succeeded in teaching a dog to throw a forward somersault.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.