C. J. Cornish

“ The arms are stretched wide apart, the thumbs and fingers are spread, and grasp each fold of the coat with the anxious care of one who thinks that a slip will cause a fall of a hundred feet, and the soft body and tail half envelop the limb down which they are descending, fitting to the surface like some warm enveloping boa. As soon as it reaches the hay-pile in its cage the lemur instantly burrows, its long tail vanishing like a snake, and in a minute it is once more asleep, and unconscious of the world. ”

“ Family life in the wild boars’ quarters is harmonious and amusing. For the first month the little orange-striped pigs depend on their mother for food, and take no notice either of visitors or of each other. Each roams about by itself in the most independent fashion, or drops down to sleep on its stomach, with its legs stretched straight out before and behind, like a kneeling elephant in miniature. ”

“ Yet the conditions of submarine motion are so favourable, that the speed of the bird below the surface is three or four times greater than that gained by equally rapid movements of the feet when it has risen and is swimming on the top. The lustre of the feathers in the clear water, the cloud of brilliant bubbles which pour from the plumage, like the nebulous train of a comet, as the bird rushes through the water, and the sapphire light of the large blue eye, make the cormorant’s fishing one of the prettiest aquatic exercises in the world. ”

“ As a rule nothing could well be more morose and forbidding than the eaglet or the young of any hawk or falcon. They are helpless, savage, and unresponsive to any form of kindness. But the young vulture is almost as tame and intelligent as a puppy. It follows its keeper in the warm house, which it shares with the tortoises, sitting down when he stops, and rising and running with a half-bird, half-quadruped gait which is irresistibly comic. ”

“ It is no paradox to say, that the range of life in the ocean abyss, where the explorer gropes for creatures which have invaded regions lying below 261miles of superincumbent ocean in eternal darkness and everlasting cold, may be better known in fifty years than the list of inhabitants of the Central African forest, with its horrible incubus of twilight gloom, and the matted tangle of encroaching vegetation, which rises solid and unbroken from the rotten soil beneath to the lowering and electric clouds and vapours that brood upon its upper surface. ”

“ The darters, though resembling the cormorant rather than the penguin in using their feet only for propulsion, are so clearly a survival of some ancient type, with their long snaky necks and pointed mandibles, and meagre membranous wings, that the imagination travels back at once to the steamy forests and swamps, and fish and saurian-haunted waters of some antediluvian epoch. The appearance of these creatures below water is even stranger than when perched on the bank above. Like the cormorant they swim with the feet only, and with the same rapid mechanical alternate movements of each. ”

“ But whatever the cheetah’s emotions of dislike, the tiger did not share them, but lay half or wholly asleep, as if the chords which were being played made an agreeable lullaby. Judge, then, of our surprise, when, at the first notes of the piccolo, which succeeded the violin, the tiger sprang to its feet and rushed up and down the cage, shaking its head and ears, and lashing its tail from side to side. ”

“ But the greater number of English elephants spend their time as hard-working members of the large circuses and travelling menageries, and lead a wandering, homeless life, in curious contrast to the comfort which surrounds the fortunate inmates of the gardens of learned societies. Their deliberate movements mask a wakeful self-possession which hardly ever deserts them, and whether marching by the cornfields on the open downs, or through the streets of a manufacturing town, the elephant never misses a chance of levying contributions of food on the road. ”

“ It is black from the crown to the legs, without a single white feather, and has none of the unpleasant appearance of the less noble vultures. So devoted is it to its keeper, that when some of the gigantic Seychelles tortoises were introduced into the large house in which it lives, it rushed at them to drive them away the moment he entered the house to feed it, and stood between him and the horny monsters, its wings wide stretched and its beak open and hissing. It still lies down to be caressed, and is in every way a very handsome and interesting bird. ”

“ The true falcons, which do not surpass the hawks either in size or courage, have black eyes, which lend a nobility and dignity to the expression of the bird which the goshawk, with all its pride of carriage, never attains. There is something infinitely roguish and mischievous in the light-blue eye of the jackdaw, which would be pure ruin to the character of its grave cousin “parson” rook, if, by some unkind freak of nature, one were born with such disfigurement; indeed, it may be doubted if the colony would not pronounce sentence of execution at once upon such a discredit to the tribe. ”

“ But, great as is the number of luminous creatures in the shallow waters, the percentage among those dredged from the deeps is greater, though their brilliant glow, when lying upon the decks of the exploring ships, is no guide to the possible intensity of their light in the pressure under which they live. Many of the deep-sea species possess light-projecting organs in numbers and perfection unrivalled by the shallow-water forms. Some of the fish have double rows of tiny lamps running the whole length of their bodies, like the rows of port-holes in an ocean steamer’s sides. ”

“ No creature suggests such perfect indifference to cold as this Arctic bear, with icicles hanging to its fur, as it plunges again and again into its freezing bath.
The beavers are, of course, invisible, having long ago provided against the frost by plastering the wooden sides of the new house with mud and turf, and dragged a supply of dead branches as far as they could be forced to enter the narrow door. Though they are fed every day, and have nothing to fear from the weather, the instinct of winter storage is as strong as in the wild state. ”

“ There is a curious attraction in watching these half-human appeals to animal emotion, and marking the quick look of interest and surprise visible in most of their faces, as the sweet sounds gradually steal on their senses, and the growth of pleasure—or fear—as the creature springs to its feet, and either advances eagerly to listen, or with bristling hair retreats to the farthest corner of the den, until perhaps pleasure or curiosity overcomes their terror at the unusual sounds. ”

“ Contrasts of brilliant colours, as in the plumage of the birds of paradise, and of the parrots and lorys, are the usual and beautiful adornments of birds. Any visitor to the cases of a good natural history collection, will find a hundred instances of this form of decoration for one of true pattern. Even the wings of butterflies, though spangled with colours in dots, lines, and spots, are usually devoid of pattern, though the juxtaposition of a number of the same species would instantly produce the effect of pattern. ”

“ The Gayal, an immense bison from the jungles of Assam, with a coat as smooth and sleek as the bison’s is shaggy and unkempt, drinks the iced water in its pen, and stamps the frozen ground—while the steam rises from its 5broad nostrils into the cold English air—with all the vigour of a shorthorn bull in a Surrey straw-yard; and the wild swine, whether from India or Europe, are equally indifferent to the weather. ”

“ Yet it is now certain that where the fancy painted a survival of the sterile and lifeless plains of an unformed world, or at most the rude survivals of primitive fossils, the bed of the deep sea teems with animal life, and the clinging darkness of its waters is peopled by myriads of fragile and fantastic forms, and lighted into a blaze by the effulgence from their bodies. ”

“ The head, narrow and flat, resembles the head of a snake; the nose is sharp, and the fixed and motionless eyes are of the palest dusty gold, set in a short horny pillar of a deeper golden brown. The crocodile’s coat of armour is less complete than that of the alligator; and its quick, vivacious movements make it far more troublesome to the keepers when the tank has to be refilled and cleansed, than the big alligators, which will allow themselves to be used as stepping-stones as the water ebbs away. ”

“ In any case, to listen to the distant strains of a brass-band is a different experience from that enjoyed in a chamber recital by your own violin-player, one who can draw from his instrument by sympathetic skill melodious chords, sounds soft and weird, grave and gay, strident or tremulous, harmonious or suddenly discordant, eye watching eye, and quick to change or repeat a note as he marks the varying expression of emotion roused by sound on animal faces, sometimes strangely expressive, or on others in which for minutes the eye alone gives token even of life. ”

“ That a creature whose engineering structures were based, consciously or unconsciously, on principles only known to highly civilized man, should embellish them with conveniences known to half-civilized man, was a natural inference; and to credit the beaver with a wish to insert windows in the walls of his lodge was no great flight of fancy to men who had seen with their own eyes that the same animal could construct a dyke a mile long, with the precise section which human experience has determined to be that best adapted to resist the forces of pent-up water. ”

“ When in the bath by herself the female bear is in a state of pure physical enjoyment delightful to watch. She always prefers to take a “header,” but not after the orthodox fashion, for as her nose touches the bottom she turns a somersault slowly, and then floats to the surface on her back. After several rolls in the water she begins to play. Taking hold of her hind-paws with her fore-feet, she makes a huge ball of her body, and turns round and over with a curiously buoyant, easy movement, occasionally putting her head out to take breath and look at the spectators. ”

“ With a luxurious instinct for comfort, the little creature usually lay asleep upon the light-green hay which the mother pulls from the rack above—a background which contrasted admirably with its rich sepia and cream-coloured stripes.
But the pride and flower of all the youth of the Zoo is the young hippopotamus. As it lies on its side, with eyes half closed, its square nose like the end of a bolster tilted upwards, its little fat legs stuck out straight at 216right angles to its body, and its toes turned up like a duck’s, it looks like a gigantic new-born rabbit. ”

“ The slow, ungainly bird is transformed into a swift and brilliant creature, beaded with globules of quicksilver where the air clings to the close feathers, and flying through the clear and waveless depths with arrowy speed, and powers of turning far greater than in any known form of aërial flight. The rapid and steady strokes of the wings are exactly similar to those of the air birds, whilst its feet float straight out level with the body, unused for propulsion, or even as rudders, and as little needed in its progress as those of a wild duck on the wing. ”

“ Hard as it is to conceive the bare existence of life under the conditions of the ocean abyss, the mind pauses in astonishment at the completeness of the triumph by which creatures apparently doomed to live in eternal night are supplied not with mere slimy secretions of luminosity, but with rows of bright and ever-burning lamps, in organs fitted with lenses and reflectors, which shoot their beams sidelong through the circumfluent ocean, or project shafts of light before their eyes to illuminate their path. ”

“ The eland, couched placidly on a bed of golden straw, with its satin-like biscuit-coloured skin gathered into soft little wrinkles at the folded joints, and its dark full eye turned to gaze mildly at the visitors, seems a type of what the domesticated antelope should be, shielded from the weather, eating artificially prepared food, lying on the straw of civilization, and dependent for its food on the stockman’s punctuality. ”

“ Yet the economy of the Lion House so far differs from the ordinary life of the other inmates of the Zoo that, for an undiscerning public which wants excitement and has no time for observation, there is every inducement to confine its visits to a particular hour. The cattle-sheds, the Antelope House, the Monkey Palace, or the Aviaries, present much the same appearance at any time of the day. The pleasant round of comfort—eating, drinking, playing, or sleeping—goes on without variety or long cessation. But the life of the great carnivora is ordered differently, and with greater exactness. ”

“ The golden and sea-eagles never present so fine an appearance as in these bright winter days. Those who see them with their wings and tails ragged and broken in the summer and early autumn, would hardly recognize them in their compact and close-set winter plumage, as they scream aloud in the frosty air, and fly to and fro in their large aviary on pinions undisfigured by a single broken feather. ”

“ They can no more endure 254cold than a tropical butterfly, and a fall of a few degrees of temperature on a winter night chills the last sparks of life in their tender little bodies. The Pinche monkey fully deserves its place in the marmoset cage. Except in face it might pass for one of the latter, for its body has the same bird-like plumage, barred with yellow and black, and it warbles a little song like some tropical wren. But its head and neck are plumed with white, like the war-dress of some Indian chief, and its black face and high features make the resemblance more amusing and complete. ”