The Passing of Jane.

The Passing of Jane.

What might have been a long, if not a brilliant, career as a public entertainer was cut
short by the death last week, at South Perth, of a young alien, who has been resident in our, midst for some time. She was but three years old when the end came, but her brief life was packed with romance and adventure. Of her birthplace, Borneo, she remembered nothing, having been taken while yet a baby to Rangoon, where she spent her first year with an elderly Chinese foster-father. She was next adopted by
Captain McDonald, of the s.s. Janus (after which vessel she was named Jane), accompanied him on many voyages and visited many ports. Growing tired of seafaring, she at last settled down in South Perth, where her striking gifts and attractive personlty were making her known to an ever-widening circle of admirers.

Like most Orientals, she developed early an extremely motherly disposition, lavishing a great wealth of affection on a family of kittens, which she raised to nurse as tenderly as Australian little girls nurse their dolls. When these nurslings had to be taken from her (on account of an incursion of the stickfast fea). she was inconsolable, and began visibly to pine away. A regrettable indiscretion in the matter of diet may have hastened her decline, but there can be no doubt that her bereavement was mainly responsible for her untimely end. A flealess kitten was at length restored to her, but it was too late: her heart was broken, and when pneumonia finally attacked her she seemed to have no power of resistance, and passed quietly away.

Those who knew her agree that many humans might have been better spared by the community than little Jane, whom- the Zoological Gardens authorities mournfully declare to have been the most promising young orang-outang ever entrusted to their care.