If you go to the Zoological Gardens you ought to be a good walker and not easily tired. The animals are in cages, but they are not all close together; there are long stretches of green grass and trees and beautiful flower-beds between, and to go over the Zoo thoroughly takes a very long time. But it is not likely that any of you would want to know it thoroughly; the things you want most to look at are not the curious rare small animals or different sorts of birds, but the largest and best-known animals, such as the lions and tigers, the bears, elephants, and giraffes. Of all these the lions are the most interesting.
If we arrive at the Zoo a little before four o'clock in the afternoon we ought to go straight to the lion-house, for four o'clock is the lions' dinner-time. The house is light and warm, and the cages are all down one side in a row. Behind them are the railed-in gardens belonging to the beasts; butsometimes the doors between are shut, and the lions are not allowed to walk in their gardens. On fine sunny days, however, we can see them there outside, licking their great lips and rolling about lazily on the warm ground. In the lion house about ten minutes to four all the great animals begin to get restless; they walk up and down and whine or howl, and as four o'clock draws near they get more and more excited, some of them going round and round in circles, always quicker and quicker. Though they have no watches, they know the time exactly, which is rather wonderful, for there is nothing to tell them four o'clock is near. This is their one meal in the day, so no wonder they look forward to it; and when you see what they get, it doesn't seem much for such a great big animal as a lion. Soon a rumbling sound is heard, and a little truck laden with raw meat runs up through a little passage between the cages, and the keeper pushes it along the front of the cages to the end. Then the animals get frantic; the sight of the raw meat makes them savage; they leap and howl—great howls that would make your blood run cold if you heard them on a dark night when you were out in the forest. The animal that goes round in circlesgoes so fast he nearly tumbles on his head, and the others trot backwards and forwards, and all is noise and confusion. The keeper undoes a bar at the bottom of the cage, which leaves just enough room to put the meat in; then he picks out the piece he means for that animal and thrusts it through at the end of an iron rod. The lion or tiger pounces on it, and growling, carries it into a corner of its den. The keeper replaces the bar, and goes on to the next one, and so on until all are fed. Then a deep silence follows; there is only a licking of great lips, a sort of purring of content, and a sound of bones being crunched or scraped, and we can look at the animals more easily than when they are running about. Here in front is a magnificent lion, with a great tawny mane; his broad nose is wrinkled as he crunches his bone. He has torn all the meat off it almost at once, and his rough tongue has licked it clean until it is quite polished; but he still goes on chewing it with those huge white teeth as long as your finger—teeth that would crunch through your arm in a moment. This old fellow is usually good-tempered for a lion, but when feeding-time comes his wife Mrs. Lioness has to go into the back den shut off by a little door to eat her dinner alone, or they would fight. Suddenly Mr. Lionraises his head and looks round grandly, as if he were ashamed of all those people who come to stare at him. He was a king in his own country, and now, alas! he is only a captive king. Perhaps he sees a woman carrying a little baby in her arms, and he fixes his eyes on that baby until it is out of sight. What a delicious morsel it would make for dessert! But he knows he cannot get through his bars; he learnt that long ago when he was first brought here. He was not born in the Zoo—oh no; he had been caught when he was full grown. He remembers quite well the wild, free life, where, if he were not sure of a dinner every day, at least every now and then he got more than he could eat. While he licks his bone he is in a quiet mood, and if you listened very hard you might hear him talking.
'Yes,' he says (Lick, lick), 'that bone was very good, but there wasn't enough on it, and now I'm not going to get any more until to-morrow. Oh, those stupid humans, how they do stare! Have they never seen a gentleman eat his dinner before? They would open those silly round eyes a bit wider if these bars were not between us. I wish they could have seen me that day we caught the zebra. It was grand that!' (Lick, lick.) 'I had hunted all one night without getting even the whisk of a tail;and also during the day in the glaring, hot African sun, when I wanted to go to sleep; and I was very hungry. We, I and my wife, lay down in the shade a little while towards evening before we parted to see what we could pick up. There were the little ones to be considered, for when they had come running up and seen me with nothing, all their little tails dropped down, and you never saw such a set of little cats in your life. I told them I would bring them something next time for certain; and so I set off alone, as I said before, in the evening.
'The sun had burnt up all the grass, which was a kind of dusty brick-red colour; but that's not a bad thing for a lion, because he doesn't show against it. It was a very wide open plain where I was, with just a few shrubs and odd bits of tree for shelter. Well, I crouched down under one of these, trying to make myself as small as I could, and praying that the still air wouldn't send the smell of me over the plain to warn all those silly creatures I wanted to catch.
'Presently I smelt zebra. Now, good tender zebra makes a dish fit for a king, but the brute can trot at such a rate that I knew I shouldn't have a chance to catch him running. I must hideand leap out. The smell got stronger and stronger, and then I saw them half a mile off, a whole herd, galloping just as straight as they could come towards my hiding-place. I grew hot and cold then, I can tell you, and my tail quivered so I was afraid they would see it. I was in fine condition, and I reckoned that at the distance they would pass I could just by a very long spring land on the back of the leader. But then they might at any moment scent me, and I should be done for; up with their heels, and nothing more of supper should I see but a cloud of dust. So I waited, and they came right on. I shook with excitement. Then, just at the right moment, I gathered myself up, and with a great spring I cleared the distance and landed clean on the back of the leader. That was a surprise for him, I can tell you. He went down as if he had been shot, and the others, with snorts of terror, flew away like the wind. One stroke of my paw killed him, and then I stood up over his striped and quivering body and roared as loud as I could for my wife and little ones. They weren't far off, and they came as fast as they could; and to see those little beggars dancing about that zebra was a sight, almost as good a feeling it gave me as when I landed on that zebra's back. It hadbeen a record jump that. We measured it afterwards in strides, and my wife said she was proud of me, and she always knew I could jump better than any other lion in South Africa.
'Well, those little beggars jumped on that zebra, and bit at him; but the skin was too tough for their little teeth, bless them! It was the funniest sight. But when the old woman and I started in, we did more than that, I can tell you; we tore off great chunks of him, and the little ones ate what they could. They got in the way, too, and we had to give them a slap now and then to keep them in order; and they snarled and swore at each other until their mother had to quiet them. When we had done we felt as if we could hardly walk, and we just wanted to get home as fast as we could and do no more that night. We had pretty well finished up that zebra before we walked off, and the vultures came hopping round to clean up what we had left. I was feeling all right then, and we lay down comfortable and satisfied. Oh dear! I had quite forgotten where I was; and now I wake up to find myself in this dull place, where there is no hunting and no fun, where we are caged up in horrid bars.'
Just as the lion finished speaking, Mrs. Lionesscame out from the inner den. She was not nearly so handsome as her husband, and he thought her not nearly so handsome as his first wife, who had hunted with him in South Africa; still, she was company, and that was something.
We have stayed a long time at this lions' cage, and we must pass over all the rest of the lions—some of them born in captivity, who have never known the delight of a wild, free life—and go on to the great striped Bengal tiger, with his magnificent head and handsome face. There is not the same tremendous strength in his appearance as in the lion's, but there is something almost more terrible in his long, gliding body and catlike movements, more ferocious altogether. In the wild state the lion prefers to prey upon animals, and will not turn on man unless he is desperate. But a tiger sometimes takes to the life of a man-eater for no reason but because he likes the taste of human flesh; and once he has begun to eat human beings, he is a man-eater to the end of his days. He turns man-eater sometimes, too, when he is old and his strong teeth fail; and then he will hang about outside villages to pounce on a soft-flesh man, who is easier to catch than a wild animal.
Tigers are very fierce; a mother tiger with hercubs will attack anything. When the cubs are little she teaches them to hunt for themselves, taking them out with her on expeditions and showing them how to catch smaller animals, such as young calves or pigs, until they are strong enough to hunt larger ones, when they leave her and begin housekeeping on their own account. A great many tigers live in India, and many a wretched native has ended his life by being caught by one of them. You would think, to look at the royal tiger, with his reddish markings and black stripes, that he could be easily seen at a great distance, but this is not so. In the jungle where he lives the stems of the bamboos are light, and the markings of the tiger are so like his surroundings that you might get quite close to him and never know it. He walks through the dense thick jungle with the loose, springy step of a cat, and woe be to any luckless animal he sees! Sometimes he will find an enclosure with some young bullocks in it; then he will take one, and leave the others, for, unless he is a very young tiger, he does not kill for the love of it, but for food. He carries off his prey, and comes back a night or two after for a second one; and if the owner of the bullocks does not remove them he will soon have none left.
Quite near to the lion house, on the other side, is the reptile house, where live snakes, crocodiles, and lizards, and all sorts of curious animals. The most interesting are the enormous snakes, called boa-constrictors, with bodies nearly as thick as a child's, and many yards in length. They are not in cages, but in glass houses, like glass boxes. The glass is very thick and strong, and the snake does not dash himself against it to get out. He would not take the trouble to do that, for he moves slowly, and when you see him at the Zoo you would think him very lazy. There he lies, with his oily body, covered with little scales, hanging round the branch of a dead tree which has been put into his house, or perhaps lying coiled up on the gravel floor in rings and rings, so beautifully neat that you wonder how he can take the trouble to fold himself up so nicely before he goes to sleep. He certainly would not get crumpled if he lay anyhow, as your clothes would get crumpled if you did not fold them up. Watch him very closely. You can see he breathes, and perhaps he glances up and winks with one eye, or darts out a wicked little tongue. How can a creature like that, so big and so slow, ever get any food? Well, he can go fast enough at times, and he does not often want ameal, because he eats so much at one time that it lasts him for many days. He writhes his great body along the ground in the thick woods of his native country, and lies so still that you might tread on him without seeing him. He lives in Brazil and other parts of South America. Perhaps a young deer comes down to drink, all unconscious of the hideous beast lying in watch. He stoops his pretty head, then, with a writhing movement, the boa is upon him. The deer struggles frantically, but the great folds of the snake close ever tighter and tighter round him with a strength that breaks his delicate bones and squeezes the life out of him. When the animal, crushed and breathless, ceases to struggle, the boa opens his gaping mouth, and bit by bit the whole animal—it may be still palpitating—is forced into that awful throat. The snake cannot tear his prey; he has no hands or feet, no claws or hoofs. He can only swallow it whole. It would seem impossible sometimes that he could get that mass into his comparatively narrow throat; but his muscles are elastic. He stops half-way through his horrid meal and lies still to rest, then another swallow and another. In the meantime, his teeth, like little sharp saws bent backwards, covering all the roof of his mouth as well as thejaws, are firmly fixed into the victim, so that it cannot draw back. When the disgusting meal is done the great snake lies helpless and swollen, and has to wait until his food is digested before he can get about comfortably.
When he is in the Zoo he doesn't get anything so large as a deer, but rabbits and small things that he can swallow easily, and frogs, of which all snakes are very fond, perhaps because they are slimy and slip down quickly. There are many other snakes beside the boa, some not so large, but more poisonous. The boa is not poisonous. He relies on his huge strength to kill his enemies; but other snakes, such as vipers and rattlesnakes, are. Even when the head of a viper has been cut off it still remains poisonous, and may cause death. The rattlesnake is so called because it makes a funny rattle with its tail before it strikes. It is about five feet long sometimes, and the sound of its rattle sends terror into the heart of anyone who is near, as he knows that at any moment the snake may dart out upon him with its hideous head aloft and its wicked eyes gleaming. The rattlesnake is found in North America.
The reptile house has been rebuilt and is very hot and damp, to suit the animals who livethere. In the middle there is a large tank with numbers of ugly crocodiles living in it. They are dark greeny-brown, like a log that has been a long time in the water, and if you were floating down the Nile, or any river where crocodiles live, in a boat, and saw something floating that you thought a bit of old wood, it might very likely be the back or head of a crocodile. He has a bony coat like a suit of armour, and it would be very difficult indeed to break through it, and he swims along, using both his strong tail and his flat feet. He is what is called an amphibious animal, because he lives partly on land and partly in the water. He must breathe air, but he can shut up his nostrils by a fold of skin as we shut our eyes, and can remain under the water without breathing for some time. His enormous jaws are like a pair of great shears, and woe be to any animal or man who gets his leg between them. It will be cut off as cleanly as the gardener cuts a tall flower with his shears. The crocodile lives in water, and catches fish and other things; he comes out at times and lies on the banks, and in the evening, when the land animals come down to drink, he hides himself in the water, and catches anything he can with his ugly snout. Fancy a dainty antelope finding suddenly that hisdelicate nose was pinched tightly by Mr. Crocodile's teeth, and that he was being drawn down, down to a hideous death!
But we have stayed much too long in the reptile house, and have not even mentioned the pretty little green frogs and the many other things to be found there.
On the other side of the lion house, away from the reptiles, is the sea-lions' pond. Sea-lions are not the least little bit like real lions, but when sailors heard them roaring on the rocks far out to sea they thought they must be lions, and so they gained the name. There are several of them at the Zoo, huge clumsy looking creatures with big whiskers, and a skin like india-rubber. At one end of their pond is a mass of artificial rock with caves and terraces, and when the sea-lions are out of the water they gallop about on this in an astonishing way, considering that they have no legs, and only end in a fish's tail. They lollop along on two front flippers and their strong muscular tail, and then plunge off the rocks into the water as quick as a flash of light. Once in the water they seem to be everywhere at once, their movements are so fast and graceful. Diving at one end of the pond, they are up at the other before you have had time to take breath.
The best time to see them is when they are fed, which is after the real lions. The keeper goes into the enclosure with a basket of fish, and in their excitement the sea-lions writhe and wind and chase each other till the pond seems full of gigantic eels. He throws the fish one by one in all directions, and the great beasts simply dance after them. Even after the last fish has gone, still the happy commotion continues for several minutes.
A great change was made in the Zoo when the Mappin terraces were built. These were presented by a Mr. Mappin who wanted the animals to be seen in a more natural state than is possible when they are in cages. The great idea is that the animals are not separated from the sight-seers by bars, but by a very deep and wide ditch, ditch isn't the right word, fosse would be better, but fosse is not a very common word.
Across this, people can look at the bears in safety, and see them far better than under the old conditions; while the bears themselves are in the open air, and have a good space to roam over and a fine pond to bathe in. They are some beautiful shaggy brown bears here, just the very model on which Teddy bears are made; and, if you are kind to them, and throw them bits of biscuits across thefosse, some of them will sit up in the most engaging way and hug their hind feet, rocking themselves backwards and forwards in their excitement about the promised dainty.
High over the bears' open places, rise rocks on which various sorts of chamois and goats live happily. They can climb far above our heads and look down on us, or leap from rock to rock as if they were in their native haunts. I often wonder what they think of the bears running about below them! Sometimes they must watch in surprise as they see the bears chasing each other. There are one or two together in most of the big spaces, and they go through the most absurd antics, plunging in and out of their ponds, and eyeing one another cautiously as they stand with the water running off their fur.
There are a great many other bears too, for whom there is not room on the Mappin terraces. These are in the old bear-quarters, which look rather like two rows of open fronted shops standing back to back. Here are black bears with big yellow or white collars and very smooth coats. They come from Malay, and are not at all like one's ordinary idea of a bear. There are also funny little bears who go head-over-heels to make people look atthem. There is an open cage here, too, with a pond in it. Sometimes the grizzlies live here; very fearful they look too, with their terrible claws, as long as fingers. Or there may be a family of young ones romping together.
Bears are to be found in nearly all parts of the world, and they are very different from one another. Bears in their natural state would not attack men, but when men follow them up and try to hunt them they become very savage. There is a bear-pit at the end of the double row of cages, and if we go up on the top and look down we shall see the two brown bears who climb up a pole to get buns.
Now we will go back again to visit the Polar bears who live in a spacious place at the end of the Mappin terraces, and deserve a little more attention than the rest because they are so very different in their appearance and habits.
One day I caught Mr. Polar Bear in a good humour, so that he was actually willing to talk to me. 'It's not so bad here sometimes,' said he. 'The keeper does give us plenty of fish. It isn't so good as seal, though. That's what I like—seal rich and juicy, and almost alive. But it doesn't matter much, after all, for I have no appetite, it's so hot, always hot; my great thick coat makes me feelabominably warm. The only comfortable place is the bath, and that's lukewarm. Cold, do you call it? Oh, you don't know what cold is—real keen, cutting cold, which makes one feel young again and ready for anything. Oh for those long blue Arctic nights, when the sun never rises for days together, and the stars flash like diamonds, and the aurora shoots over the gleaming sky!—nights when everything is still, held in the grip of a frost greater than you can imagine; where for miles and miles there is only the glittering ice reflecting the flashing sky and the deep blue shadows under hillocks of frozen snow. Then it's worth while to live. Shall I ever see it again? My wife used to say before she died that she didn't know what was the matter with me, I had grown so cross; I only growled at her. But I knew what was the matter with me. I can't breathe here, it's all so stuffy and dull—no excitement. You've never caught a seal in your life? Then you don't know what excitement is. You just try, and then come and tell me if it isn't the best sport in the world. These seals—silly things!—make holes in the ice, and come up to breathe now and then; and these holes are regular traps. Right down below the ice-cold water lies fathoms deep, still and dark, and we cannot getthe silly things there; but here in the ice is a nice little round hole. I have been walking with great long silent strides over the beautiful frosty snow, and I come on one of these, and lie down beside it, hiding myself. I have to be very still; the slightest movement would send Mr. Seal far away. When I have waited there hour after hour, perhaps I hear a faint sound in the water, a little ripple, so faint that anyone not used to it would never notice it; and then I feel thrills all over me. By-and-by the silly round head of the seal peers out, all glistening with the wet. I am lying behind a hummock of snow—we call them hummocks there—and he looks all round, and finally drags himself up on to the ice; then with a bound I am on him. But there is only time for one try—he is as quick as lightning, I can assure you—and if I miss him, he's into that hole and down, down, down for ever, and there's my supper gone too. But if I get him, what a juicy feast, what masses of soft flesh and oily fat, what tearing and rending! Ah, the taste of seal!'
He licked his lips, was silent suddenly; then, with a great growl, turned away. He had remembered where he was, poor fellow, and that the joys of seal-hunting would never be his any more!
We are now not far from the monkey house, where there are great cages the height of a room, with bars filled in by wire to prevent the monkeys from getting their little hands through to snatch, for if ever any saying was justified it is that one, 'as mischievous as a monkey'; yet, in spite of the bars, mischief is sometimes done. Stand near with a hat trimmed with flowers, and you will not have to wait long to prove it. That large monkey who has been sitting in a corner very quietly spies the brilliant flowers. He begins to move slowly and stealthily; then, with a sudden wild spring, almost before you realize what has happened, he has grabbed the bright flowers, torn them out, and danced back to the very highest corner of his cage, where, jabbering with delight, he picks the petals off one by one, and lets them float down to the ground. He is big, so none of the others dare take his prize from him; but woe betide any littlemonkey who finds such a treasure. He darts off with it, and then begins a wild race right across the cage; one monkey after another joins in, leaping in the air from one swinging rope to another, and springing up the bars of the cage. The little monkey jumps, catches a rope, drops to the ground, and springs at another rope. Now he is in a corner, the others have him; but no, with a dive and a wriggle he has slipped through them, and is chattering and grimacing on the other side of the cage.
Feed one of them with nuts, a little wrinkled black hand is put out to receive them; if you touch it, you will feel it cold and clammy. The little black palm holds the nuts for a second, and then the monkey crams them into its cheek, which makes a sort of pouch, and, retiring to the top of the cage, cracks them one by one, throwing down the shells just as a boy would do. They are very human the monkeys; you cannot help feeling all the time they know a great deal more than they pretend. Have you ever looked into a monkey's eyes? If not, do so the next time you have the chance; they are the saddest eyes on earth—just as if the poor little monkey thought a great many things in his small head, but could never express them, and so was very unhappy. There are a largenumber of monkeys at the Zoo; they are never still, and so funny that they make you laugh outright sometimes. The bigger monkeys, which are called apes, are also very interesting, but are in another house altogether. They have glass in front of their cages. Of all of them the chimpanzees are the most human, and one or two of these are in separate cages, where they are bathed in artificial sunlight all day long to keep them in good health, as they are very delicate.
One of the latest additions to the Zoo is a wonderful Aquarium, where all sorts of strange fishes and sea-creatures can be seen swimming about in natural surroundings, lit from above. From the huge wicked-looking octopuses with their snake-like feelers, to the tiny sea-horses with heads very like those of the knights in chess pieces, there are wonders untold.
On this side of the Gardens there are many things we have not yet seen, but we must leave them and see the big animals, the elephants and rhinoceroses. To reach these, we go through a tunnel and come up on the other side.
The first thing we see here is a row of most brilliantly coloured parrots; I do not suppose you ever saw such colours anywhere else—the brightest reds and blues and greens and oranges,all in the same bird. It seems almost impossible to believe that the feathers really grow like that; it seems as if someone must have taken a big paintbrush and daubed on the colours. If it is warm and fine the parrots are out of doors, each sitting on a perch, and tied by a little thin chain to one leg. What must it be to see them in their own native forests flying about among the green trees? Fancy, if we came across a great bird, as large as the largest doll, brilliantly coloured, flying about in the garden at home! The parrots come from South America, New Zealand, and Australia; so they like hot countries, but they seem to do very well in England, and look quite perky and happy. I will tell you what I think is the reason of this, the parrots are so conceited that they are pleased when people admire them, and they like nothing better than to be at the Zoo, where dozens of people come past every day and say:
'Oh, just look at that one! Did you ever see such a beauty? Look at his scarlet and blue! Now, who would have thought a bird could be like that?'
On dull or cold days the parrots are indoors, and if you go into their house you will hear a tremendous noise. All of them are shrieking and screaming at once. Perhaps suddenly in the midstof all this din you will hear a funny parrot voice saying: 'Thank you, my dear; Polly's quite well,' which will make you jump. When you turn round you will see it is one of the birds who is talking. They cannot all talk, and those who do just know a sentence or two without knowing the sense of it, and say it on all occasions; but very proud they are of the accomplishment. There are dear little green parrakeets, too, who fly about in flocks in Australia, looking like flights of animated green leaves.
Besides parrots there are in the same house toucans, birds who have enormous bills and rather small bodies—in fact, they seem to have spent their time growing bills. The bill, or beak, is like the claw of a lobster, and is rich orange colour. The toucan's eye has bright blue round it, and round that again orange colour. The bird himself is black, but he has tips of scarlet on his costume and a white throat, so he is altogether very grand, and he is so solemn that you think he must imagine himself very superior.
Just beyond the parrot house is a long range of buildings like a large stable, and here are the elephants and other big animals. Perhaps the elephant is out earning his living by walking roundthe Gardens with a seat on his back, on which anyone can have a ride who likes. He is very gentle and tame, though his enormous height and great swinging trunk make him appear rather fearful.
If he is at home, and we pay him a visit, he coils up his trunk or lifts it over his head, and shows a huge three-cornered mouth, into which, he gently insinuates, he would like you to throw biscuits. There are both Indian and African elephants, and the African are generally the larger.
Elephants as a rule have very good characters, and get fond of their keepers. They are big and gentle; yet in some cases they have suddenly turned savage without any apparent reason. In the wild state they live in dense forests, and unless they were very strong and their hides were very thick they could never get through the trees and shrubs at all; but they force them asunder with their great strength, and snap the long twining plants that hang from tree to tree. Any other animal would be wounded and torn with the spikes and thorns, but the elephant's hide is as strong as a board. He does not mind prickles, and the only sensitive part of him is just behind the ear, so when he is tamed a man sits on his neck, and with a little sharp-pointed spike pricks him behind the earon the side he wants him to go. It does not hurt, but the elephant feels it and soon understands, and follows the directions as a horse follows the pull of the reins in driving. Elephants live entirely on green food and vegetables, and never want to eat flesh. In their forests they can find plenty of food, and they tear down great branches of rich trees with their long trunks, and then strip the leaves off neatly and put them into their mouths. When the elephant is thirsty he goes to a deep watercourse and drinks, and then, sucking up water in his trunk, he squirts it over his back and sides in a cooling shower-bath.
If you understood elephant language, and came here one evening when the day's work was done and there were no other people about, you might hear the elephants talking.
'Those silly fools of humans!' says the Indian elephant; 'not one of them can throw straight. I can tell you half my time is spent in picking up the bits of biscuit they mean to throw into my mouth and throw somewhere else. I would have a school for teaching them to throw straight if I were in authority. The bits are so little when you get them too—mere atoms.'
'Always thinking about eating,' says the Africanone, who is a lady. 'Really, I wish they would give you more hay or something to stuff yourself up with. For me, I don't care what I have to eat, but I do long for a little heat and a good plunge in a real river with soft muddy banks instead of my wretched tank sometimes.'
'Ah!' the Indian elephant answers, 'is there anything like it, that plunge after a long, hot, sleepy day, when one has stood about under the trees? I used to have a particular tree I always went and leaned against. It just fitted my side, and I wore the trunk quite smooth. And there I stood all the long, hot day, with sound of the rich forest life in my ears, the buzz and hum of the myriad things that fly and swarm, and the dense leaves kept off the sun; it was dark and hot. Then, when evening came, and it grew a little cooler, we used to join together, all of us who belonged to the same herd, and go down to the water. Then what romping and splashing, what trumpeting and fun! We squirted each other with mud and water, and came out fresh and cool. Ah, those were grand times!'
'You were a fool to get caught,' said the African one rudely, for she had not very good manners. 'How did it happen?'
The Indian elephant looked quite sad, and winked his little eyes as if he thought he should cry. 'It was a terrible story that,' he said, 'and the lesson is, never depend on women. I met one day a handsome elephant in the forest, who seemed to me the nicest I had ever seen. She was not very big, but her ears were particularly large, and hung down so gracefully; and as for her feet, I don't think I've ever seen such beautiful great flat feet on an elephant. Well, I loved her, and she seemed to like me, and we talked together and rubbed trunks, and were very happy, and I forgot where I was quite; and the next thing was I found I was shut in between high palisades, and when I tried to get out the gate was shut. And then men threw ropes over me, and tied my feet to great poles; and the wicked little elephant ran away grinning, for she was a decoy. You've heard of them perhaps—elephants who are tamed by humans, who teach them to be wicked and go out into the forest just in order to trap their own kind and bring them into captivity? It was sad, very sad!'
'But you are happy and contented here as a rule,' said the African.
'Yes, yes, I can't grumble; they are very good to me, and I get some exercise walking about, andas some day I shall grow old, it's as well, perhaps, to be looked after. It's terrible to be old when one lives in the forest; besides, I should feel strange to go back to the old life. I've been here now thirty years.'
'And I twenty. How time does go past!'
All this and much more you might hear if you knew the elephants' language, for they are quite too clever not to have some means of talking to each other.
The rhinoceros is very different. His eyes are wicked, he turns his head from side to side; he would like to stick that horn at the end of his nose into you if he could, and, holding you down with his great flat feet, rummage about inside you with it, and you would not live very long under that treatment. His skin hangs in great thick folds like plates of armour, and is so loose that it looks as if his tailor had fitted him very badly. He is much smaller than the elephant, and his thick-set body shows great strength. He is hideously ugly according to our ideas; but rhinoceros' ideas are different, and he would probably think the smooth pink-and-white skin of a child hideous. He lives in the jungle and eats the leaves of trees, which he tears off with his long upper lip. Somerhinoceroses have two horns on their nose and some only one. You can see both sorts in the Gardens. When the rhinoceros in its wild state has a little calf, as its young one is called, the little one runs along in front of the mother at the sound of any danger, and the mother follows in a wallowing trot behind, so that if necessary her body could guard it from danger. Sometimes hunters shoot rhinoceroses and kill them, and then eat part of them, which they say is very good, just like beef.
After leaving the elephant and rhinoceros house, we pass some sheds and yards, with deer and other animals, and then come to another set of buildings like stables, where there are the hippopotami and giraffes. If you thought the rhinoceros ugly, what will you think of the hippopotamus, with his great shovel-like nose and little ears? He looks like a stupid fat pig, only many, many times larger than the largest pig that ever lived. There are two of these animals in the Gardens now—a lady hippo, born at the Zoo, and about thirty years old, and another, quite a boy yet, only ten or eleven years old, who was born in the Zoological Gardens at Antwerp. Neither of them have known what it is to wallow in the soft mud on the sides of rivers or the joy of living wild and free; they are fat, sleepy,stupid, and contented. There is a tank in their yard at the back, and they are free to walk out as much as they please. Sometimes they lie in the water with only their backs out for a whole afternoon at a time.
The yards of the giraffe are next door, but separated by a high wire fence, so that even the long neck of the giraffe cannot bend over and touch the hippos. Of all animals, the giraffe is, perhaps, the most odd, his neck is so very long, and his markings so rich. He looks as if he had a stiff neck, he holds his head so high, and seems so grand. Giraffes are very delicate animals, and great care must be taken of them. When you think how difficult it must be to bring an animal with a neck like that over the sea and in a railway train to England, it seems wonderful that the Zoo ever owns one at all. Giraffes live on the open plains in Africa, and if they take fright they fly away over the ground with their long legs, covering yards at each stride. If ever a hunter gets near enough to one to throw a rope round him, he may think himself lucky indeed. If a giraffe has been caught like this, the hunters draw him, kicking and struggling, up to a tree, tie him there, and leave him to fight and try to get free for a wholeday and a night; sometimes he fights so desperately that he kills himself. However, if he is still alive in the morning, the hunters come and find him exhausted, and they can then take him away without so much danger of being killed by a blow from his great hoof or a swing of his hard head, which he uses to strike with. Once down at the sea, a special place has to be made in the ship so that his long neck may not be cramped; and when landed in England there is a long box-like arrangement fitted on to a compartment of a train, and this can be bent down flat along the roof of the train when it passes under a tunnel. Just think of the many difficulties there are before a giraffe can be transferred from his native plains to England! If you look at a tall giraffe, with his sad, lovely eyes, you will think it cruel that he should be brought into captivity; but, after all, when he is here he is well looked after, and everything is done to make him comfortable. And if he had not been brought here, thousands of people would never have seen one of the most curious animals in the world. The giraffes at the Zoo are continually changing, for though some have been born here, they do not live long, and new ones have to be brought from Africa at great cost.
Not far from the giraffe house are the zebras, with their beautiful black and white stripes, looking like wonderfully marked donkeys. They are very wild and untameable and of uncertain temper; it is best not to go too near them. Well, with the zebras we have finished seeing all the well-known animals of the larger kinds, and so we must say good-bye to the Zoo, perhaps to come again another day.
The British Museum is a very wonderful place, so wonderful that few people understand what they see there. They wander along the corridors looking vaguely at the cases of precious and rare objects on every side; they are impressed by the size of the place, but they do not come to the Museum with the idea of looking for anything particular, and they go away without learning anything. No one man, however clever, could understand about all the things that he will find there; and as for a child appreciating even a small part of the treasures there collected, it is impossible. Supposing a very clever man, who had travelled in many foreign countries, had begun while he was still young to gather together all the valuable and curious things he saw to make a little museum, that would be worth seeing; but probably it would be made up of only certain things that that particular man liked and understood. Now, the BritishMuseum is the museum belonging to the nation, and instead of only certain things being collected, there are curious and valuable things belonging to every kind of study. For instance, if you were studying the different nations or wild tribes of the earth, you would find things belonging to various tribes of people in the Museum; or if you were interested in rare old books, you would find more of them at the Museum than anywhere; or if you wanted to find out anything in any branch of study, you would find clever men at the Museum who would help you.
Sometimes a man who has made a collection of interesting things in his lifetime leaves it to the Museum at his death, or perhaps the Museum buys his collection for the nation; and so every year more and more things are accumulated, until the value of the treasures stored in the great building is greater than anyone could imagine. I expect when you have read all this you will say: 'Then do let us go to the Museum. Even if I don't understand, I'd like to see it.'
So we will go to this solid massive building across the wide space of gravel in front, where the pigeons wheel round our heads and run about on the ground almost under our feet, up the wide,shallow steps under the huge columns into the great entrance-hall. It is all free. The smallest child and the most important man can walk in there alike without anyone's asking questions. As we stand in the entrance-hall there is a wide staircase on one side, and in front of us are swinging glass doors leading by a passage to a great room called the reading-room. To go into this room it is necessary to get permission from the attendants in the hall, who make you sign your name on a piece of paper. Once inside, the size of the vast room almost takes your breath away. There is a great dome ceiling, and the walls are lined with books; there are shelves upon shelves, and thousands and thousands of them. In the middle of the room is a circular desk, where some men are sitting; and round this desk, again, there are shelves lined with huge books, and all these books are filled with nothing but the names of the other books which are kept at the Museum, and which anyone can see by taking certain precautions. People are allowed to walk in just to see the room, by asking in the hall; but if anyone wants to study here he has to write beforehand for a ticket, then he can go in and look in the catalogue (that is what the big books full of names are called) for thebook he wants. He writes it on a slip of paper, and puts on the paper also the number of any seat in the room he has chosen. Then he places the piece of paper in a basket and goes away and waits, perhaps twenty minutes, for the books he wants—for he can ask for any number at one time—and presently a man brings them to him.
From the centre desk there are other long lines of desks like the spokes of a wheel stretching out from the middle to the sides of the room, and here numbers of people sit reading all day long. It is very interesting that so many people should work so hard. Look at one of them. He is an old clergyman, gray-haired, and with many wrinkles on his face. He is reading books of sermons so that he can preach next Sunday a sermon made up out of the books. Next to him is a young girl dressed very plainly. She has eyeglasses on, and looks severe. She belongs to an office, and has been sent down here to write out some quotations from a book that cannot be got anywhere else than at the Museum. She earns her living by working for the office, and she likes it very much, and would not change her life with another girl who drives about in a carriage dressed in fifty-guinea frocks,and pays calls on rich people, even if she could. Near her there is a dark-skinned man, a negro. What can he want? Perhaps he is working up to pass an examination. And near him is a worn, tired-looking old fellow, who has gone to sleep over his books. He was well-off once and enjoyed his life, and many people were glad to be invited to his house. But he was foolish and lost all his money, and now he comes up and asks for a few books just as a pretence, so that he can sit there in the warmth and comfort for a little while. There are many authors in the room busy making books, books, still more books, out of those that have been already written. When will it stop?
A copy of every book that is published has to go to the British Museum. The publishers are bound by law to send a copy here, and so hundreds of books pour in continually; there is no end to them. Even in the days of Solomon it was said: 'Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.' But the books that were then written were as nothing to those that have since been written, and every year brings forth more than the one preceding.
You have noticed that round this vast room the walls are covered with books looking gloomy andgrey. But these are only a tiny part of the books stored here. If you ask the attendant in charge he will take you behind those walls, where you will think you have stepped straight into a dream-world, for there are passages and passages all lined with books. You might lose yourself, and wander on and on between streets of books higher than your head for many and many an hour. But the storage of books is not the only difficulty the librarian has. He has to keep copies of all the principal newspapers, too. Now, a newspaper in itself is a little thing, small and thin; but when you think of newspapers by the hundred, newspapers by the thousand, going on growing and accumulating, then you can understand how difficult it must be to find room for them all.
Well, we can leave the book-room and go to other parts of the Museum. We can wander down corridors filled with beautiful statues or with mighty, enormous figures, far bigger than you can conceive until you have seen them—figures whose fist is bigger than your whole body, whose fingers are about the size of you, made by the ancient Egyptians, the wonderful people who held the Israelites in captivity—great frowning, mighty figures brought here from across the sea. Or youcan go down other corridors lined with many things from savage lands—curious ornaments and boats, and rough skin clothes; or you can see, too, the most interesting part of all, where there are mummies.
In the days long ago, when the land of Egypt was very great and powerful, while England was a lonely little island inhabited by savage men, who knew of nothing beyond their own shores, the Egyptians used to spend much time and money on preserving the bodies of their dead, for they thought that if a man's body were allowed to decay he could never live again in the other world; so when anyone died the body was cut open and filled with rich spices and wrapped in many bandages all steeped in certain ointments. And these things really did preserve the bodies from decay, so that now, two or three thousand years after, we, the English, who have learned to travel and understand many things, go to the land of Egypt, now not great and mighty any more, and pull out the dead bodies of their kings and queens, who lived and loved and reigned when our ancestors were savages, and we bring them back to England and put them in glass cases for everyone to see. There they lie, these people who thought so differently from us,who never knew anything about us, who were rich and powerful, and now are of no consequence. It seems strange, doesn't it? Some are still in the painted wooden cases, into which they fit as into coffins; others have been taken out, and are shown with all the red-brown bandages wound round and round their limbs, and in some cases part of these bandages have been undone and the foot or the leg of a mummied man or woman is visible.
There is not much else here that can be explained in writing, though many things that you would care to see.
At South Kensington there are many large fine buildings, and the finest of them all is the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was opened by King Edward in 1909. It contains all sorts of wonderful and beautiful art work.
The Natural History Museum at South Kensington is a large building, and it is newer than the British Museum and not so gloomy. It is built of different sorts of yellow brick, and has tall towers, and stands among well-kept green lawns. When you go into the hall you see long galleries stretching out on each side. In one there are most beautifully stuffed birds of every sort you could name, and a great many you could not name. All of these are set up in glass cases, with the flowers and grass or bushes round that the birds choose to make their nests in when they are alive. We can see here all the different ways that birds take to hide their nests and young ones. Poor birds! they have so many enemies—the weasel, who sucks their eggs; the cat, who loves to eat their young ones; the birds larger than themselves, who prey upon them; and last, but not least, the cruel boys whodestroy the nests 'for fun,' and a poor sort of fun it is.
There are two ways birds hide their nests: one by really hiding them—that is to say, building them under a deep bank or in the thickest part of a tree—and the other by making them so like their surroundings that it is difficult to see them at all. You all know instances of the first way; the second is not so common. But perhaps the commonest is the plover, who just brings together a few straws on the mud of a field and lays her eggs there without any protection; yet the eggs are so like the mud-coloured surroundings that you might hunt for a long time, and even walk over them without seeing them.
Down the middle of the room at the Museum are the more common British birds, and we will look at one or two. But it is quite impossible to talk about all of them, or we should still be talking when the keeper of the Museum came to turn everyone out and shut up the building for the night.
Look first at this pretty clump of grass, with a bramble trailing over it and a bunch of primroses growing near. You would hardly have found the nest, so well hidden, unless you had known it must be there. It is a robin's, and the mother isbringing a caterpillar for her little family. Which of the three gaping yellow mouths will get the delicious morsel? Quite near is a wren's nest in some ivy, and so neatly is the nest made of moss woven together that there is only one tiny little hole left for the heads of the little wrens to peep out. The perky little father, with his tail cocked up, stands near. He is very shy and jealous, and so is his mate; if you put just the tip of your finger on the edge of a wren's nest the birds would desert at once, leaving the wretched young ones to starve. The little brown bird in the next case is the nightingale, who sings so sweetly; he is not much to look at, yet he has a picturesque home, with meadow-sweet and wild roses growing over it.
It is odd how many birds build on or near the ground, which you would think was dangerous. The robin is particularly fond of this; it chooses an overhanging bank if it can find one, and though the nest is well hidden, there is nearly always a cat prowling near to seize the young ones just when their first feathers are growing, so it seems wonderful that robins ever escape at all. On the left side is the wood-wren, with a nest just like a handful of hay flung down among some dead leaves. Near here, too, are the house-martins, and further on theswallows and other birds, who build under the projecting eaves of houses; of all the nests, these look the most safe and cosy. The house-martin is a really clever builder; he takes little mouthfuls of clay in his beak and sticks them one by one under the deep overhanging tiles or slates of a house or barn, and gradually forms a complete nest like a ball of clay, which dries hard, and is stuck against the wall, with only one opening like a lip at the top. The nest does not look comfortable, but it is, for inside it is lined with the softest white feathers, whereon are laid the pearly-white eggs. The sand-martin, the house-martin's cousin, prefers the side of a cliff. He digs into a cliff or sandbank a long tunnel quite as long as your arm, and just big enough for him to pop in and out with comfort. At the very far end of this in the warm darkness he puts bits of straw and feathers to make a bed, and here the young are hatched. Until they grow older they never go down that long mysterious tunnel where mother and father run in and out, but only see in the distance the white gleam of a round hole. What a wonderful world it must seem to the young bird when he first steps out! He is very timid, and as he gets near the opening he hears the beating of the waves on the shoreperhaps, and then the great wide ocean opens before him and the illimitable sky. What a big world! He must turn almost giddy with fright and amazement.
Some birds choose furze-bushes to build in, which must be prickly and uncomfortable, but are thick. Here there is a woodpecker family. The woodpecker is a fairly big bird, and he has a beautiful crimson streak on his head; with his strong bill he carves out a deep hole in a tree, right into the trunk—it is wonderful that the bird should have the strength and patience to cut into the solid wood—and when he has made a deep hole, he begins to make it bend down, and in the dip he makes his nest. The young woodpeckers are therefore shut in very tightly and safely. The parent birds run up and down the trees seeking for insects, on which they live. To see them run straight up a tree as a cat would do is very curious; but they are shy birds, and not often seen.
Other birds, like the reed-warbler, build in reeds; this seems a very safe plan. Here you see several tall green reeds growing out of the water, and about a foot above the water the bird has made a clever nest, twisting bits of roots and grass together, and lacing them in with the reeds, whichare strong enough to hold such a dainty thing. So the little nest swings and sways with the wind over the water, and the reed-warbler is safe from cats, at all events; but one imagines the young birds must sometimes tumble out and get drowned before they can fly.
A very odd bird is quite near this, and that is the butcher bird. He really is a butcher—that is to say, he kills tiny animals and even other little birds, and keeps them in a larder for use. For this purpose he chooses a bush with thorns, perhaps a hawthorn, and then when he catches any small creature he sticks it on the thorns and leaves it there spiked until it is wanted. Look at this one's larder. He has a wretched little dead sparrow hanging by its neck from a big thorn, and two or three bumble-bees spiked too. We can imagine the mamma saying to the little ones: 'No, dears, you mustn't have any sparrow to-night just before you go to bed; it would give you indigestion and make you dream. Papa will have some of that for his supper, but if you'll be good children I'll give you each a bit of bumble-bee.' The mother bird is talking to a young one who has got out of its nest. They are fat, strong little birds, as they should be with such food.
After this we come to bigger birds—ducks and puffins. Puffins have beaks like poll parrots, and are about the size of a rook; they have neat white shirt-fronts, and their beaks are red and yellow and blue, but they have silly faces, as if they thought of nothing but their own fine clothes. They live near water on cliffs, and sometimes use an old rabbit burrow for a nest, in which they lay one pure white egg, and one only. When the young one is hatched the parent birds feed it on tiny fish and minnows. You can see here the puffin bringing up a minnow in his beak for supper.
Beyond are great grey and white gulls, with their keen beaks and strong legs. They are pirates, the gulls, and will eat other birds' eggs if they can get them; they are wild and fierce. Another sea-bird, very different in appearance, is the little stormy petrel. Very small and graceful; he is a thin little bird, with a dark-brown coat, but at heart as wild as the proud gulls. He is never happy except when dancing over the cold grey waves and feeling the dash of the spray. The petrel is at sea all day, and scorns the quiet land and delights of home. The howl of the storm, the clash of the water is music to it, and it would pineand die in a cage on land. When it wants to lay an egg, it makes a nest not far from its beloved sea, and lays there one egg; but even when the young one is hatched the mother cannot give up her wandering life. She is a wanderer by nature, and she only comes back at nights to see that the little one has food; then away to the wild tossing grey water again.
The next set of birds are the owls, and very wicked and ferocious some of them look. There is the long-eared owl, with his bent-in, short, hooked nose and funny feathered ears standing straight up. The little owls are balls of soft fluff, and are eagerly looking at the dead mouse that father owl has brought for them to eat. They have a very rough nest, merely a platform of pine-twigs thrown together in the fork of a fir-tree; but they are hardy little birds, and do not mind that at all. Close by is a monster owl, called the great eagle owl. He has bright yellow eyes, with very large pupils as black as jet; his tail is spread like a turkey-cock's, and altogether he looks very terrifying. You would not like to meet him alone if you had made him angry, for he is as large as a fair-sized dog, and his ugly claws and savage beak would make short work of your soft face and bright eyes.Luckily, you are not likely to meet him, for he doesn't live in England.
It is worth while to cross over here to the other side of the gallery and see the great bustard, with his wonderful curving white feathers. He is about the size of a small turkey, whose cousin he is, and his plumes are like those on a field-marshal's helmet. Near here are two curious sorts of nests—one the Norfolk plover, or, as he is called, thick-knee; the eggs are just laid on the sand, and are so much the same colours as the speckled stones around that you have to look hard to find them, and at a little distance they seem to vanish altogether. The funny little wee birds, too, are just like rough sand, and have two black lines down their backs; crouching down without moving, they would be well hidden. The common tern lays its eggs amongst rough stones, where you would think that anything so fragile as an egg would easily get broken. Near his case there is a beautiful pure white gull, who lives in the Arctic regions among the ice and snow. It is a wonderful law of Nature that birds and animals often resemble their surroundings. We have seen that the tiger is not easily seen among his bamboo-stems, and that birds the colour of sand live on sand; well in the Arcticregions, where there is perpetual ice and snow, nearly all the creatures are pure white, from the great Polar bear down to the rabbits and gulls. This is explained by the fact that if an animal is not white he shows up against the ground, and then his enemies, other animals waiting to prey upon him, see him, and catch him and eat him; so the white ones escape, and as children take after their parents they are white, too. And if one of the children happens to be darker he is quickly eaten, and his whiter brothers and sisters escape. This white gull has made a nest that looks like nothing but a muff of moss lying on very rough and sharp stones; there is not much reason why the little ones should want to climb out, at all events, while their feet are tender. Some enormous eagles attract attention: one with strong beak and claws. A condor near is one of the largest birds in the world. His native place is in South America, and at first when travellers brought accounts of this gigantic bird they were not believed; but at last someone managed to shoot one and brought it to England, so then he had to be believed. The one here in the Museum has spread his wings, and the length from end to end is larger than the tallest man. The hideousvultures near have scraggy necks, with a ruff round them. The vultures never kill animals for their own food, but live on the refuse that is left by other animals or men. The eagle is like the lion among the animals, and the vulture is like the jackal, who runs about picking up all the nasty bits no one else will have. In the cases beyond there are graceful swans and chubby ducks and flamingoes, birds whose long pink legs make them look as if they stood on painted stilts, and who have beautiful rose-coloured edges to their white wings. At the very end of the gallery there are two huge cases as big as the side of an ordinary room, and it is well to sit down here and look at them, for both are full of interest. In part of one the space is taken up with a great cliff, in which is the home of the golden eagle, wildest and most untameable of all eagles. He lives far up on lonely mountain heights, where the air is cold and pure. His great wings sail over vast dark chasms, where men have sometimes lost their lives. His eye sees an extraordinary distance, and his flight is very swift. He chooses for his home a cave or natural hole on the face of a high cliff; this is called the eyrie, and here he gathers together sticks, and odds and ends to make a kind of bedding for his young. When thelittle eaglets are young they are just like balls of white cotton-wool, with streaks of black here and there, all fluff and down, like those you see here. The mother and father birds go sailing high up in the sky, and suddenly they descend with a swift dive and pounce on some tiny lamb who has strayed from his mother's side, and perhaps fallen over the edge of a cliff and cannot get back again. He has been bleating loudly to call his mother to him, for he is too little to know he may attract enemies as well as friends; and his cries have been heard by the eagle, who comes down like an avalanche, and, seizing him firmly in its great talons, carries him away higher and higher to the nest in the cliff. Then there is a whirr and swoop, and the mother or father eagle, whichever it is, alights on the rough platform in the cliff and lays the still warm and only half-dead woolly lamb before the young ones. There is not much chance for it then, but let us hope it has been stunned and made unconscious long before this by its swift whirling voyage through the air. Eagles catch rabbits, too, and anything they can find. In one nest there were found the remains of nine grouse, four hares, part of a lamb, and many other things. Here in the eagles' nest in the gallery you can seea half-eaten rabbit's leg hanging out over the edge, and other nasty remains.
Crossing over to the big case on the other side, we see another cliff, bare and gray, and covered with white birds—geese and gulls of many different sorts. This is a copy of a bit of a famous rock off the coast of Scotland called the Bass Rock, which rises out of the sea like an enormous stone many hundreds of feet high. At the times of the year when birds make their nests it is white with wild sea-birds, and the nests are laid along the crevices and shelves of the bare rock, so near together that the birds can easily touch one another while they are sitting on them. If anyone fired a gun near the rock there would be a sudden flight up into the air of hundreds of birds all at once, like a gigantic cloud, flying, whirling, screaming, mixed up together, rising higher and higher in great circles till you would feel stunned and deafened and almost frightened, as if a piece of the sky had suddenly taken shape and broken up over your head. These wild birds know they are safe on the Bass Rock, and they take no care to protect their nests; no one could climb up those sheer precipices and steal the eggs. The birds sit there safely, looking down upon such heights aswould make you giddy even to see; and in front the blue sea stretches for miles. It is a wild, free life.
Going back down the room, there may be time to notice the cases on the sides of the partitions full of stuffed birds, many very beautiful, but not so interesting as those that are shown with their nests and young ones. Quite near the door is a case with some large birds as tall as a child of seven in it. They are cassowaries, with drooping dark-brown feathers that look rather out of curl, and necks of crimson and blue. Further on there is a family of ostriches, the great father bird very grand and with a black coat, and magnificent white tail-feathers—those feathers that ladies buy for their hats, and for which they give so much money. Ostriches are kept on farms in South Africa, and their tail-feathers are pulled out at certain seasons of the year; and then they grow, again and are soon ready to be pulled out again, and people make much money this way. I do not know how much pain this gives the ostrich, but it cannot be pleasant; and perhaps he wishes sometimes he was not quite so grand, but was dressed in a plain dull-brown suit trimmed with dirty white like his humble wife. The ostrich is very savage, and can never be depended on; hemay turn upon the keeper who has fed him and cared for him for years, and, seizing him, kick him with his great feet until he is stunned, or dance upon him for no reason at all. He does not look safe; his narrow flat head and cruel eyes would make you think he was a tyrant. The little ones running about at his feet look so ridiculously small in comparison that you would hardly think they could be his children; but in time they, too, will grow big like papa and have splendid tails, and lord it over their poor wives.
On the other side of the room are birds of paradise, who have also beautiful tails, but in quite a different style from the ostrich. They are smallish birds, but their long tails, reddish or yellowish in colour, fall like cascades or fountains of water on both sides. Ladies also wear these in their hats sometimes when they want to be very grand. Near them is one of the birds with the queerest habits of any bird. It builds a little bower or grotto, and decorates it with shells and whatever else it can pick up—it really seems to like to make it pretty; and then it runs about in and out of its bower for amusement. So it is called the bower bird. These birds live in Australia, and their bowers are made of bits of strong grass or thinstick woven over to make a sort of tunnel through which the bird can run. But the funniest thing is that they like to put bright things, such as shells or pretty stones about for decoration.
We must now leave the birds, which have taught us so much, and go on to other galleries. Just across the great hall is a long gallery entirely filled with the bones and skeletons of animals which are now no longer found on earth. This does not sound attractive, but it is, almost more so than the birds we have just left, though, of course, we shall not find anything pretty here.
Have you ever heard that there was a time when huge animals, larger than the largest elephant, lived and walked about on earth, not only in hot countries, but in England, too? If man lived at all in those days he must have been a poor, frightened, trembling little creature going in peril of his life from all the monsters who were around him. In England the river Thames was surrounded by a thick jungle, with mighty trees and creeping plants, like the jungles in India; and the climate was hot and steamy like the inside of a greenhouse. Here lived enormous elephants called mammoths. As we enter the gallery we see one in front of us, a monstrous creature, who makesthe ordinary elephant put behind him to compare with him seem small. But larger still is the head of another behind that again. Can you even imagine a beast that could carry tusks about twelve feet long? That is to say, if two of the tallest men were laid end to end they would be as long as that elephant's tusks, and the thickness of the tusks was as great as a man's thigh. Think of all this weight! And it was resting on the head and neck of the elephant! His strength must have been like the strength of an engine. You would have been less to him than a mouse is to us. It is not only guessing that makes us say these animals lived in England, for here are the real skulls and skeletons actually found buried in the earth. Further on is what is called a sea-cow, a great fat beast weighing an enormous amount, which floated in the sea. And at the end of the room is one of the strangest of animals. Picture a creature as high as the room, standing up on its hind legs like a kangaroo, and having very strong fore-arms, with which it clutches a small tree. This is the skeleton we see now. It could have packed you away inside it and never known you were there; but, luckily for the children who lived on earth when it did (if there were any), it did not eat flesh, butonly the leaves of trees and other vegetable things. It was called the giant ground sloth, and, as you may judge from this name, was not very quick in its movements. It was not found in England, but in South America, and there are now no more like it in existence; and if we had not got its skeleton we should never have known it had lived at all. There were many other curious creatures on earth then—some that lived in the water and had long necks like snakes, and fat bodies, and others like enormous lizards. There was also a big bird, bigger even than the ostrich, this you can see in a case near the sloth. Then in the centre of the room is the tall skeleton of a very, very big stag, which is to other stags as a giant would be to you. He is the Irish elk, and his skeleton was found in the peat bogs of Ireland; he must have been a magnificent creature to look at when alive, with his proud, free head and branching horns.
Passing through the hall, we see three or four cases showing examples of the different colours of animals—the white ones among the snow, and the yellow ones on the sand, the protective colouring of which we spoke before; and on the staircase sits a statue of Darwin, the wonderful man who found out this about animals, and also many other wonderfulthings, and made us see animal life in altogether a new way. When you are a little older you will find many things of great interest in Darwin's books. Upstairs on one side is a gallery full of humming-birds, tiny birds some of them, no bigger than butterflies, and as brilliant as jewels, red and blue and green and yellow. It must be wonderful to see them flashing about in their native land and hovering over the gorgeous flowers; but here, so many together in one case, they lose half their beauty, and they lack the sunshine to bring out their lovely colours. There is also a gallery full of pressed flowers, and here you can learn anything about flowers, leaves, and seeds; and on the other side there is one full of stuffed animals. Now, we have seen the living animals at the Zoo, and we do not care to see the dead ones here so much, though we can just glance around it. But there is one animal you must see, because there is no living animal like it in the Zoo.