The Zoo Revisited

Front matter

THE ZOO REVISITED.

By PHIL ROBINSON.

A Chat with the Queen's Lion

I.—A CHAT WITH THE QUEEN'S LION.

MANY happy returns of the day, Victor.”

“Thank you,” yawned the lion; “is it my birthday?”

“Yes, as near as we can fix it. You are four years old to-day, and about three hundredweight, I should say, in the scales, if we could only persuade you to sit in l them.”

“No, sir, not after my experience of having the collar filed off my neck.”

“Why, do you mean to say you bear a grudge, after all this time, for an operation that prevented your being choked! The collar was put on you in Africa when you were perhaps five months old, and five months later it had got too tight for you, and so Mr. Bartlett had it taken off—to save your life. It was very kind of him.”

“I don't know anything about that,” was the reply; “all I know is that I did not see the kindness of having my head put in a sack, and my legs stretched out while they filed2”

“Yes; but remember you were a finely-grown young fellow, and, good-natured though you are (for a lion), you did lose your temper, and handling a lion out of temper is not exactly the kind of job you would put children to However, that's all over. They got your collar off in spite of you, and so here I am wishing you many happy returns of the day, instead of j seeing you stuffed down in Cromwell Road.”

“Perhaps; but I'm not going to sit in the scales to be weighed all the same. And I'm much bigger than I was when they put my head in a sack; so don't try to do that again.”

“Certainly not. Nobody wants to. You are a remarkably handsome lion, let me tell you, one of the most thoroughbred-looking of your royal race. Besides, your colour, golden-red, gives you a fine distinction above all your kind—'the ruddy lion' that 'ramps in gold on proud Scotland's royal shield' (excuse the quotation); but I am sorry to hear that your mane will never darken. I think the black manes of the Libyans give them a grim and gloomy majesty that is very becoming. But this is getting personal.”

“A trifle,” said Victor.

“You are very proud, I presume, of being 'the Queen's lion'? She would be very proud of you if she only knew what a noble personage you have grown.”

“Yes, I suppose she would,” said the lion, with one eye over his shoulder at the lioness who was approaching; “but I have never seen the Queen, and2”

Here he suddenly sprang to one side and growled a remonstrance at his beautiful companion.

“That is a lovely lioness,” I said.

“Ya-a-s,” he drawled, “a pretty little thing, but too young. Look at my back,” and he turned to show me the pattern which the lioness's claws had engraved and chased upon his golden skin. “A great deal too young. That is her idea of playing—and I don't like it. But,” brightening up, “I had a talk with Mr. Bartlett the other day, and showed him my scars, and she's going away—until she gets older, and learns manners. But she is a beautiful creature, isn't she?—Ah! would you!” he thundered, as the lissome princess made a pounce at him with all her claws unsheathed.

“Would you rather be alone then?”

“Alone! No. I'm engaged to Leona.”

[VICTOR AT THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS, REGENT'S PARK From a photograph by Russell and Son, 17, Baker Street, N.W.]

“The fine lioness that Mr. Vaughan Kirby gave to the Gardens last May? that he brought up from a cub, and when she was full grown that followed him about anywhere like a spaniel? She is a noble bride.”

“At any rate she has the manners becoming to her position, and the dignity. She doesn't get excited over everything she sees and2 Hullo! Bless my eyes, what's that?”

And suddenly Victor forgot all about dignity and not getting excited and stood at his utmost height, glaring with set eyes over my shoulder, his tail swishing at the tip, and he gave a low, strange growl, and the young lioness understood him and came to his side, then looked where he was looking, and it was splendid to see her outbreak of enthusiasm, the terribly eager way she paced up and down, and the awful fixedness of her glare. It was a noble lover of the real wild life.

I turned to see what had happened, and there, just emerging from their stables, was a group of elands with a fawn among them in the paddock opposite to the lions. Neither Victor nor the lioness had ever seen them before, for they had only that morning been brought from another cage. And the great elands loitered about and browsed, perfectly regardless of the fact that a pair of lions, literally quivering for their blood, were watching them from a distance that two bounds would have covered. Victor soon pulled himself together; his limbs unstiffened, his head was lowered. But the young lioness went to and fro all the morning with a deadly gleam in her eyes and a magnificent longing in the poise of her head and the quick short step.

“Those are elands,” I said, “such as your father and mother fed upon, and it may be that in your babyhood you, too, were fed with their venison.”

“I can't say,” replied the lion. “All I know is that when I saw them I felt a queer feeling such as I have never felt, before. Perhaps, as you say, I was fed on eland by my father.”

“Or perhaps it was what we call 'instinct.' You knew they were elands because you couldn't help knowing" it. For the princess here was born in Holland, and yet look at her. She feels just as you felt, but she couldn't tell you why.”

“Yes, she does; and yet where we were before there were plenty of animals that would have been g-ood to eat, and neither of us experienced such a sensation as this. I assure you my mouth is watering.”

“No; that was because the animals that you used to see from the other place were bison from America and gayals and buffalo from Asia. Your father never saw bison or gayal, and so neither you nor your princess recognised them. With the elands it is different. Her inherited instinct tells her that if she were still in Africa she would rush upon and kill these very antelope, and she has not yet learned that she cannot do so in Regent's Park. You yourself may actually have eaten elands, and though you have forgotten it, the memory is really somewhere in you still. But you left Africa when very young.”

“Yes, I was a mere baby when they took me away from Sokoto. A child carried me nearly the whole way to the coast, and I was a plaything for him till they put me on the ship.”

“You don't remember it, do you?”

“No, I can't say that I do. But do you know, sometimes when I am lying asleep I dream of some place that must be Sokoto, and the wind is whispering in the crisp fronds of the palm-scrub and muttering overhead in the leaves of the mvule trees, and clouds-are driving along the night-sky, and nothing can hear me for the voice of the wind, nor see me for the drifting rock as I pass along to where I know the herds of antelope are asleep, or to the drinking-place on the river-bank where giraffe and zebra and many a beast with horns come down to drink. But the dream never comes to any end, somehow. A crane cries out from the rushes yonder, or another lion awakes from his sleep with a growl—dreaming too, perhaps—and I awake before the end comes. The wind is crisp in the reeds in that pond yonder, and soft in the elms overhead, and the grey clouds are blowing across the moon. But I know there are no herds of antelope lying asleep about here; no meeting-place for the thirsty forest-folk at nightfall, where a lion may choose what he will kill. I have come to understand these bars,” he added a little wearily, and his eyes went back to the great horned things in the enclosure just across the path, and he fell into a day-dream as he watched them. But the lioness kept on her way, to and fro, a splendid picture of suppressed activity and desire. As she passed she happened to touch Victor, and disturbed his reverie.

“Did you ever hear,” I asked, “of a man called Stanley? He was up your way about your time.”

“No,” said Victor, “I was too young, I suppose.”

“Nor of Selous?”

“No. What is he?”

“Among other things,” said I, with some hesitation, “he is a mighty hunter of lions.”

“My father,” said Victor quietly, “was a mighty hunter of men.”

And he sat down, as the lions sit round Nelson's statue, with his two great forepaws straight out before him and looked me full in the face out of unfathomable eyes.

“I cannot understand,” said he after a pause, “why men hunt lions.”

“Or why lions hunt men?”

“That is simple enough; because men are good to eat. What else were they made for—at least in Africa?”

“In Africa, perhaps! It may certainly be better for an African to be eaten by a lion than to be caught as a slave by an Arab.”

“And who knows,” retorted Victor, “better for a lion to be shot by Selous than brought home to be caged by Jamrach?”

“What! and Leona before you?”

“1 wasn't speaking of myself. I am quite contented where I am—but I should like an afternoon with those elands. I must see Mr. Bartlett about it, and about taking this young lioness away. Ah! here he comes. Good-bye.”

II.—A Chat with the Sacred Ibis

[SPOONBILL AND SCARLET IBISES, AND THE SACRED IBIS. Photo by Russell, 17, Baker-street]

II.—A CHAT WITH THE SACRED IBIS

I WAS passing-by the Night Heron's pond when a gentle voice from the other side of the wirenetting-arrested my attention. At first I thought it was Mahomet's bird, the dove of Mecca, whom the Prophet blessed, and who, as “the good fairy of the mimosa,” flies to-day unharmed about the tents of the hungriest and poorest Arabs, a gentle bird of tranquil plumage and soothing note. It was sitting on a bough close to the wires and looking at me. But the voice that I had heard came again, from a stone hard by, and then I saw that it was the ibis of Egyptian worship.

“What ails you, sacred thing?” I asked.

“The top of this stone is round,” it said I “and I cannot build a nest on it. The sticks slip off and the grasses blow away, and I wish that I were dead.”

“But why not try a flat stone?” I ventured to ask. “Then the sticks will stay and the grasses will stop, and life will be worth your living.”

“But there is no mystery about building nests on flat-topped stones,” said the ibis; “and everybody says I am 'the bird of mystery.' I hear them say so as they pass.”

“Yes, gentle fowl, so you are, the Bird of Mystery, but the mystery has been dead these many centuries, and buried under the ruins of the shrines of Isis. And nowadays round-topped stones will not hold nests, not even yours, old worker of miracles in the long-ago days of Dendera.”

“Yet they call me the Sacred Ibis still.”

“True, my pied divinity. Yet you are not alone, even here in Regent's Park, in your change of fortunes. If you could only come with me to the Monkey House I would show you, looking-wofully among the straw for a nut that he has lost, the green monkey of Ethiopia, who was once a god in 'mad Egypt,' no less a one (whisper his name under your breath) than Thoth himself, revered in hoary Memphis as the life-giver, whose effigy dignified the obelisks of Luxor, and whose person was the central sanctity of a hundred . Yet to-day men call him “the green monkey of Ethiopia,” and he steals hats off the heads of passing children, and wrangles with common monkeys over crumbs of gingerbread.”

There is no reason,” said the pensive ibis, “why, if the realities are dead, we should not try to live up to our traditions. Thoth (speak not his name aloud) should not squabble with common long-tailed monkeys for gingerbread.”

[THE GREEN MONKEY OF ETHIOPIA. Photo by Russell, 17, Baker-street.]

“Or look at Pthah again. What divinity in Egypt could stand against him? Wise men nowadays call him 'the pigmy baboon,' but he was once the god of learning, and without him Hermopolis would have been desolate indeed. Was he not the holder of the scales on the judgment seat of the dead, more potent Ibis even than yourself, as the guardian of all the hundred gates of Thebes? Yet I saw him a few minutes ago making merry over a shred of a tattered parasol, the very picture of an idiot.”

“Because we have come down in the world there is no reason for us to forget our self-respect,” said the Fowl of Mystery sententiously.

“Certainly not. And look, who comes here, in a shabby tabby coat, and ears all disreputably frayed, hungrily eying the sparrows on the railings?”

“That is a cat,” said the ibis.

“Yes, and once the most sacred thing in all Bubastis. But the days are long gone by when to bury a spiced cat, processions of white-robed priests, crowned with acacias, went down, with the clashing of cymbals and the singing of the temple choirs, between long aisles of reverent folk, out through the city gates to the catacombs under the rocks. No body spices dead cats nowadays; few even bury them, except the parish.”

“You are speaking of things I do not understand. But I wish this stone were flat on the top.”

“Well, there is one over there that is as flat as it can be. Why not take that one?”

“Because it belongs to a scarlet ibis. And that reminds me. I wish you would explain to people that the scarlet ibis is not the Sacred ibis. Nearly everybody makes this mistake. They read my name on the label and then look about for me, and because I am black and white and the other is all red they think it must be the other. I don't mind them saying 'Isn't it beautiful'? but I do wish they wouldn't think it was me.”

[FLAMINGOES. Photo by Russell, 17, Baker-street]

“Never mind what those people say, they call the flamingoes pelicans. It was only an hour or so ago a man with his wife and weary family came up to this very enclosure and read off the names, 'mandarin ducks, Barbary turtle-doves, black-headed gulls' (those were the names that were up on the side of the enclosure where he was standing), and there they stood, the whole family, looking at ibises, flamingoes, spoon-bills, night-herons, and egrets, wondering which were the mandarin ducks and which were the Barbary turtle-doves. At last one child asked the question, and nobody replied, and after an interval of gloomy contemplation of the length of the flamingoes' legs, they passed on their way silent, uninformed, brain-weary with the long day's variety of reptile, beast, and bird. Had they met a whale on foot they would not have been excited. And all the man said was, 'they look to have a good time of it.' And so you have, you know.”

“Oh yes, we are comfortable enough, but don't you think we are rather mixed?”

“Well, you see, there isn't room in the gardens to give each of you an enclosure as large as this, and surely you are better off than the birds opposite, or even than the eagles, who cannot fly from the ground to the perch, and from the perch to the ground again. Here you can have a good flight. Besides, if your company is 'mixed,' you have some notable companions. There are the egrets.”

“Wretched creatures! They will not let any of us have peace, and as for the night herons, they addled all their eggs because the egrets would not let them sit quietly upon their nests. They are going to be sent away.”

“But they are illustrious birds, and among the aristocracy of fowls. Their head plumes are to this day the insignia of royalty. The flamingoes, again, what can be more courtly than they, or more magnificent when they spread their wings? Will you listen to a little poetry?”2

[GULLS. Photo by Russell, 17, Baker-street.]

The ibis, hurriedly, “They are prodigiously greedy about the shrimps, though, when they are hungry. Look at them now, refusing to let the spoonbill even see what is in the buckets. Sometimes I only get those that they drop in the water and are too lazy to fish out again, unless we actually go and pick them out of the flamingoes' beaks.”

“The spoonbills, again, they are distinctly of the peerage—Lord Spoonbill sounds as if it came straight out of Sir Bernard's Bible or Thackeray—and their manners are very2”

Here the ibis burst out laughing, for just at that minute the two spoonbills, having both got hold of the same piece of meat, were dancing ridiculously on the tips of their toes, with their beaks touching, and their necks stretched out to the utmost. At last one let go to demonstrate, and the other at once swallowed the meat.

“Yes, their manners are very2as you said.”

“The night herons, again, they belong to a family that has been ennobled from the first, and you cannot call mandarins of ducks plebeians. Isn't that good company enough? And, if you don't mind my saying it, this enclosure of yours is one of the most popular in the Gardens for the very reason that the birds are, as you complain, so 'mixed.' Nor can I imagine anything being devised, within the same space, of greater beauty and interest. You may laugh at those gulls; but not all your sanctity, my ibis, nor yet the plumage of your scarlet cousins, nor the wonders of the flamingoes, attract more sympathy than do those two common birds. For they have young ones in their nest, and the possession of those small black-spotted puffballs does more to win the hearts of the human beings who come to look at you than everything else put together. The mother's furious defence of her young ones, the absurd impetuosity of her attacks, and the ferocious vigour of her language, delight all lookers-on. The father too comes in for his share of applause, though he only sits by on a stone and shouts bravo! leaving his wife to do the hard work—and how well she does it. You would think, looking at her, she had eyes for nothing about her. Yet she has drawn a mother's circle round those precious little babies of hers, and woe to the bird, great or small, innocent or guilty, that puts a fraction of a toe within that magic ring; the mother swoops straight at the offender with such fierce anger in her voice, that he has to go at once, and without standing on the order of his going.

“The doves too are all nested, and filling the upper air with their cooing; they give to the whole enclosure a happy home-life look and sound that is very attractive, and brings into a more familiar and domestic harmony all the strange exotic birds that are grouped about the pools, and that in themselves conjure up only vague visions of African rivers and Asiatic solitudes. The combination is singularly fine, and I cannot remember in any public gardens in any part of the world so complete, so beautiful a scene as this night heron's pond of yours. To sit here in the shade and shelter of this canopy of cleverly-trained ash trees, and look on to the enclosure where you live, is, I think, one of the most exquisite glimpses of wild life in the world, and not to be surpassed even in Nature. The upper air is filled with the purring and murmuring of many kinds of doves that are perpetually floating or darting across the wide expanse. In the middle height, sentinels upon their nests, or drowsy upon the boughs, sit the herons, and the egrets and, lower, upon the stones and tree stumps, and on the ground, wading in the ponds, bathing, feeding, love-making, quarrelling, move about, perpetually restless, the strange and beautiful birds that keep you company. You, ibis, are for many visitors, the chief attraction, and the interest that gathers round you is unique; but, believe me, there is a great charm added, for the majority, by the familiar clamour of the seagulls and the cooing of the common ringdoves. Human nature is so simple a thing that if a sparrow is in the lion's cage everybody watches the sparrow.”

“Then I shall build a nest too, but, believe me, it goes against the grain to lay the sticks upon a flat stone, as all the other birds do. If you don't mind, I will try a little longer to see if I can manage it upon the round-topped one.”

“Do, and may Isis help you to a miracle.”

III. A Chat with the American Bison

III.—A CHAT WITH THE AMERICAN BISON

THERE is no animal of the present day more impressive than the bull bison. The rhinoceros, terrific though it is, has no “presence.” The elephant, even the biggest of its race, does not inspire awe, for we are too familiar with the docile Behemoth. Our children ride upon its back and feed it with buns. The lion is superb in appearance and demeanour, but it has not the bulk to make it terrible, behind bars. Now the bison is both unfamiliar and huge, and short-tempered besides, “with bloodshot eyes in savage rifts of hair.” A snort from it when angry will blow your hat off, a butt from its head, if meant in earnest, would flatten a tiger.

What a sight it must have been to see that “masterful tramping of the bison herds”

“Raging up like doom The dangerous dust-cloud that was full of eyes— The bisons.”

[Illustration: “A BUTT FROM ITS HEAD, IF MEANT IN EARNEST, WOULD FLATTEN A TIGER.”]

Few white men living have seen it, Buffalo Bill is one of the few, for he and his half-breeds butchered them by the thousand, and it is to Buffalo Bill (subject to Mr. Bartlett's shrewd business capacity) that we owe the bison-cow now in the Zoo. Not the bull. This magnificent specimen of a fast-disappearing race came to us straight from America by purchase, and it is probably one of the finest bisons in existence. In a score of years the breed as wild animals will be extinct in America, and the solitary herd in the National Park will then represent the original American beast just as the herds at Chartley Park and Chillingham now represent the original British cattle. Their extermination has been very rapid but only in step with American progress, and after all, seeing that the splendid brutes are likely to be preserved to all time in the Yellowstone Valley, their disappearance from the rest of the country is nothing more than was to be expected or desired. What room is there in “the States,” where men are already beginning to complain of overcrowding, for multitudes of grass-consuming bison? For the farmer's or the dairyman's purpose they were of no more use than the hippopotamus in Africa. They had a very small economic value, and so long as one fine herd is maintained, it is only the sentimentalist who can find reasons to deplore their extinction.

It was in this mood that I approached our captive giant. He was sitting down, head erect, with knees bent under him. What a pigmy the lion opposite looked, also sitting down, as compared with him, and he was snorting to himself with suppressed rage!

“I wouldn't say much to him,” said the cow, “he has been very much put out by something on the other side of the partition, and if he butts it much he may knock it down. What is it in the next compartment?”

[Illustration: “ONLY YAKS.”]

“Only Yaks,” said I; “little things compared with you, but noisy to-day. But you really ought to have had their tails.”

“Are they so fine then?” she asked nervously.

“Peep through this chink and see for yourself.”

And she did so. “Ah! one of those would suit me well!” And then, after a pause, “Do you think it could be arranged?”

“Well, I don't know, but I'll see about it. Are you sorry to have seen the last of Buffalo Bill?”

[Illustration: “IT GIVES ME THE NERVES.”]

“Sorry! I was never so sick of anything in my life as that pretending to be scared and not wanting to be lassoed. Why, all I wanted was to get lassoed comfortably and allowed to go back to my stable. Didn't you see yourself what straight tracks we made for our hay, as soon as the business was over? We didn't want any of those Indians halloaing after us to make us go; nor any of that whip cracking.”

“And how do you like your present quarters?”

“They're capital! But there is a beast of a cat about here that won't understand we are alive, and jumps down onto us off the roof, and off us on to the top of the fence. When you're asleep in the sun you never think of cats dropping down on top of you. It gives me the nerves.”

I laughed at the notion of this huge tonnage suffering from nerves. “Is there nothing else to complain of here?”

“Nothing that I can remember just now,” was the reply. “You might think that we wanted more space, 'the freedom of the boundless prairie' and all that kind of thing. But we don't. None of us take exercise for the pleasure of it, and we would much rather have our water and our grass put regularly in one place than have to walk miles before we could pick up a meal or get a drink. Besides, we like sitting down as much as possible, and here we can do it all day long if we please, and I think, as a rule, we do. You must give up the 'boundless prairie' idea as rubbish. Nothing likes to have to worry after its food and find it and catch it. It would much rather have it comfortably served up in a regular way.”

“But the monkeys? They are always taking exercise, for the pleasure of it.”

“Monkeys? I don't know what they are. I never saw one in my life. Is that a monkey over there? It does nothing but walk backwards and forwards and stare over here.”

“That? No, that's not a monkey, that is a tiger.”

[Illustration: “WHAT'S IT STARING HERE FOR?”]

“What's it staring here for?”

“Because it wants to eat you.”

“Eat me! Why, what does it want to eat me for?”

“Because it knows you are good to eat. If it got its choice, though, it would eat the buffalo who is next door but one to you. For it knows all about buffaloes; and in Bhownagar, where this one came from—the Rajah brought it home the other day with him to give him fresh milk on the voyage—that tiger's relatives have no doubt eaten plenty of that buffalo's. Next door to the buffalo is another Indian beast, the gayal. It is a pity you cannot see the bull; he is a tremendous fellow.”

“What, bigger than my 'bos?'”

“Yes, even without any hair and wool. The gayal is quite smooth-skinned and even so, stands higher than your Bos Arnericanus. What he would be like if he had your husband's shaggy head, and mane, and beard, one can hardly imagine. His legs are suited to the weight they have to carry, and his forehead is a broad solid plate of bony horn. A splendid creature!”

“You interest me. Is he alone?”

“No, he has a wife. That is her voice, that absurdly woful moan that you hear now. But she is commonplace by comparison with him, and in one part of India they even keep the cows in a half-tame state for the sake of their milk. And sometimes the cows break away and join the gaurs in the jungle.”

“The gaurs?”

“Yes, the Indian 'bison' of which the natives tell such wondrous tales—how they sniff up big stones with their nostrils and snort them out at the hunters with the force of catapults, and how they face the rhinoceroses in the reeds, and meet them in full charge, forehead to forehead, and often vanquish them.”

“I have never heard of a rhinoceros before. But I should like to see this gayal bull. Do they ever let him out? If we are relations why should we not see more of each other?”

“I suppose they are afraid you might not agree together, and you are all so large and strong that if you got mixed it would take a week to separate you, and by that time there would have been a lot of mischief done. The yak, for instance, would come badly off.”

“Is that the animal with the fine tail which you thought would suit me?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose you couldn't speak to the Superintendent about it?”

“Oh yes, I can, and will.”

“Will you, really? Thanks; and, by the way, you might say a word about the gayal,—my husband, I am sure, would be very pleased to meet any friend of yours. Good-bye!”