London Zoo

“ We seldom fail to see at a circus or exhibition of performing animals the well-known faces of some of the keepers at the Zoo; and when going round the houses at the Gardens, the best-known owners of circuses, the lion-tamers or elephant-trainers of the ring, may often be seen musing in front of the 191cages and taking stock of their inmates. A Suffolk villager in London nearly always chooses the meat-market at Smithfield as the first place in which to spend a happy day; and a wild-beast keeper goes naturally for change of scene to another wild-beast menagerie. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If we asked one of their children what he thought of London, he might say: 'I've seen the Zoo, of course, and Madame Tussaud's, and I've been to Maskelyne's Mysteries and the Hippodrome, and they're all jolly, especially the Zoo; but those things generally happen in the holidays: we don't have such fun every day.' A boy or a girl of this sort has really a much duller time than one who lives in the country. London is so big, so huge, that he sees only a wee bit of it.
London is the capital town of England, as everyone knows. ”

“ I agree with Mr Galsworthy that the Zoo is one of the saddest and most disgusting sights in the world. At least, I know that I never leave the Zoo, which I seldom visit, because it hurts me, without feeling a partner in a national crime. You can defend vivisection by saying that it has valuable medical results. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ HE MEANS THE EAST END.
“Zoo?” replied Terence. “Ach zoo. Ja. Jawohl. Zoo gaat ’t. Beauti-ful—lang-witch! Beauti—ful!” he enunciated with painful distinctness and many twitches of his face.
All this fell in with the tourists’ preconceived ideas of foreign utterance. They exchanged glances.
“You kin mike yors’ff hunderstood, hall raight,” interposed the linguist. “Were you ever in London.”
“Oh, yes,” answered my cousin slowly, counting off upon his fingers. “Alzoo—von—two—tree—time—Mooch peoples—in Londe.”
“Did you like London?” queried Truculence Senior. ”

“ The fact that such perfect and beautiful examples of the frail and fantastic forms which by night fill the place taken by the humming-birds by day, in the steaming tropical forest, have lived in the precincts of a London park, is sufficient justification, if any be required, for their presence among such practical and progressive surroundings. ”

“ The best people to tell you would be the children who live in London; they will read this book, and, of course, [Pg 5] they could answer all your questions, but they would not all answer in the same way.
Some would say: 'Oh yes, of course we all know the Zoo, but that's for small children; we are quite tired of a dull place like that, where everyone goes; we like balls, with good floors for dancing, and programmes, and everything done as it is at grown-up balls; and we like theatres, where we can sit in the front row and look through opera-glasses and eat ices. Madame Tussaud's? ”

“ Those which appear in the poulterers’ shops of London generally arrive in such bad condition from careless packing and refrigerating, that they are inferior to the domestic bird. But when allowed to run wild and nest in 164English woods, as is done on some estates, on its merits, and apart from any tricks of cookery, it is perhaps the very best land-bird that is available for food. The game-flavour is not too pronounced, but gives a character to the whole which is altogether absent in the tame black turkeys of the farmyard. ”

“ The live gudgeons, whose pursuit and capture form the daily excitement of the penguins in their glass-fronted tank, do not appear in the list of food provided, 337any more than the army of mice and rats, and dozens of live frogs, which frolic behind the scenes in the Snake House. Unhonoured in their lives, their deaths are unrecorded, or figure darkly among “miscellaneous expenses.” The fact is, that the rearing of tame mice and rats, and the capture and purveyance of live frogs, is an interesting and unexplored side-industry of London life. ”

“ The secret of their safe carriage lies in their own stupidity. Like a lobster in a pot, they always endeavour to escape from the front, springing towards the light, and it is precisely at this point that the strongest part of the case, the iron bars, blocks the way. When the last black leopard arrived at the Zoo, as a present from the Duke of Newcastle, who had purchased it at Singapore when on a tour round the world, it was soon shifted from its travelling cage into the fine new den it was to occupy in the Lion House. ”

“ Let kangaroos leap for others, the ant-eater runkle its mouthless way through life, the Wise Man of the Woods distract the world of science—Bobby hadn't seen the little cat. By and bye, when he had watched the lions fed and the sea-lion catch fish, and had had a ride on the elephant and on the camel, and had given buns to the bears and his handkerchief to a baboon, he confessed, and generously enough, that the Zoo was not without attractions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Monkeys are sad victims to pulmonary disease; every London fog kills, it is said, a few of them. The reptile house is, however, cool and pleasant; and the ponds for aquatic birds are very charming resorts. Altogether, if the great carnivora and the great crowds be shunned, the Zoological Garden becomes distinctly pleasant; its walks, moreover, have all the unexpectedness of "Alice's" peregrinations in the "Live-Flower-Garden," where, continually, round some bowery corner, she came face to face with strange and uncanny-looking beasts. ”

“ John's Wood house, found "Lanny" in the garden, working from a ladder on a gigantic mass of clay. Turning the corner, she was somewhat alarmed at finding a full-grown lion stretched out on the lawn. Landseer had been commissioned by the Government to model the four lions for the base of Nelson's pillar in Trafalgar Square. He had made some studies in the Zoological Gardens, but as he always preferred working from the live model, he arranged that an elderly and peculiarly docile lion should be brought to his house from the Zoo in a furniture van attended by two keepers. ”

“ The Zoo of the future will probably contain lion houses of vast size, in which the creatures are allowed to live together in large numbers. This is the system adopted by the largest owner of wild animals in the world, Mr. Carl Hagenbeck, of Hamburg and New York. In his gardens at Hamburg, six lions, two Bengal tigers, and one from Siberia, live harmoniously in society with a polar bear, a Thibetan bear, and a number of leopards. The chance of a battle royal at meal time seems too great to be risked ”

“ When an animal is to be transferred from one to the other, the bridge is run up, the shutters are raised, and the lion or tiger, after sniffing and hesitating like a cat entering a room, walks through the bridge-cage, and takes possession of its apartments. Two of the young tigers were in the sleeping-den; the other chose to remain in the bridge-cage, where it lay, crouched and 212sulking, on the floor. Though not more than half-grown, they are more massive in shape, richer in colour and marking, than any full-grown tiger in the Zoo. ”

“ Crows and jackdaws are often to be seen upon the backs of cows and sheep, but one would have imagined that a deer was too timid an animal to allow a large bird to perch upon it.
In the Gardens is a fine concert-hall; and here I may remark that in nearly all foreign Zoological Gardens there is such a music-hall, which on concert nights is packed to overflowing, adding largely to the revenue of the Gardens. It has always been a puzzle to me why our Council in London do not try to attract more people by the erection of such a hall and the engagement of the best artistes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It should, however, be remembered that a considerable variety of wild creatures can always be purchased either in London or in Liverpool; and although those who recollect with pleasure the herds of Eland, Sing-Sing Waterbuck, and White-tailed Gnu in the Paris Jardin d'Acclimatation, or the herd of Bubaline Hartebeests in the Jardin des Plantes, will recognize that the exhibition and maintenance of such fine game animals demands a great outlay of time, experience, and money. ”

“ It is, perhaps, not too much to hope that some public body may be willing to undertake at least a part of the burden. The Zoological Society of London possesses, not only the necessary establishment required, including a well-trained staff, but it also has facilities for obtaining all kinds of animals which are far greater than those of any private individual. We hope that the day is not far distant when experiments of this kind will be systematically carried on under the direction of the authorities who control the Gardens in Regent’s Park. ”

“ The northern side of the park is chiefly given up to the Zoological Gardens; and, indeed, to the world at large, apart from Londoners, Regent's Park often means nothing but 'the Zoo.' Probably it is safe to say that no other park in the world annually attracts so many visitors. ”

“ No, the reason why they would have felt his loss such a severe blow is because the public readily attaches itself to the individual animals in the Zoo, and is not to be consoled when such a favourite dies, or disappears, even if it is instantly replaced by an even finer specimen of the same species. Many persons habitually resort to the Gardens in order to visit their particular friends, Sam, Sadie and Rollo, and not merely to look at any polar bear, orang, or king penguin. And this applies quite as forcibly to the Fellows of the Society as to the outside public. ”

“ In addition to the menagerie, there is an infirmary and operating room, an anatomical and pathological laboratory, and the Society holds scientific meetings and publishes stately volumes containing the results of zoological research. Partly because of its long and successful existence, and partly because of the extensive possessions of Great Britain throughout the world, the Zoological Society of London has been able to exhibit for the first time in captivity a greater number of species of wild animals than probably the total of those shown by all other collections. ”

“ There is nothing more striking, nothing that arrests the eye more sharply—in the Zoo—than this vivid contrast of colour; yet in the bush the wavy stripes of black and white, are a protection, enabling him to hide at will.
I have seen a wildebeeste effectually hidden by a single blighted branch; a koodoo bull, by a few twisty sticks; a crouching lion, by a wisp of feathery grass no higher than one’s knee, no bigger than a vase of flowers! ”

“ JOHN CROMARTIE and Josephine Lackett gave up their green tickets at the turnstile, and entered the Zoological Society’s Gardens by the South Gate.
It was a warm day at the end of February, and Sunday morning. In the air there was a smell of spring, mixed with the odours of different animals—yaks, wolves, and musk-oxen, but the two visitors did not notice it. They were lovers, and were having a quarrel.
They came soon to the Wolves and Foxes, and stood still opposite a cage containing an animal very like a dog.
“Other people, other people! ”