Chapter I: Part 1

MARTIAL HAWK EAGLE. From a photograph by Gambier Bolton. ]

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LIFE AT THE ZOO

NOTES AND TRADITIONS
OF THE REGENT’S PARK GARDENS

BY
C. J. CORNISH

With Illustrations
from Photographs by GAMBIER BOLTON, F.Z.S.
and from Japanese Drawings

LONDON
SEELEY AND CO. LIMITED
ESSEX STREET, STRAND
1895

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PREFACE

IT may be said that some of the subjects of these notes are not obviously part of life at the Zoo, and this remark would be well founded. They have in the writer’s mind a connection with the Zoo, which perhaps is not obvious, and might not appeal to the majority of readers, and would certainly take more time to set out than its value warrants. So that if any reader or critic cares to press the point, he is prepared to say at once, _mea culpa_.

The chapters on Animal Æsthetics, dealing with the sensibility of the inmates of the Zoo to music, will be found under the title of “Orpheus at the Zoo,” by which they originally appeared in the _Spectator_, to the editors of which paper the author owes his thanks for suggesting many subjects of interest at the Zoo which would not have occurred to him, and for their kind permission to publish these, as well as other chapters in an extended form. He hopes that both these, and the unpublished chapters which are now added, present a fair picture of the many-sided present, as well as some glimpses of the past, of the famous menagerie in Regent’s Park.

For the insertion of animal drawings by Japanese artists, in addition to Mr. Gambier Bolton’s photographs, the writer must plead the conviction, which he has long maintained, that their truth to Nature is of its kind unrivalled.

C. J. CORNISH.

Orford House, Chiswick Mall,

September 28, 1894.

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CONTENTS

PAGE

THE ZOO IN A FROST 1

THE GHOSTS OF THE TROPICAL FOREST 13

THE BUTTERFLY FARM AT THE ZOO 20

PATTERNS ON LIVING ANIMALS 29

THE GIRAFFE’S OBITUARY 38

THE ELECTRIC EEL 48

DEEP-SEA LAMPS 55

THE LION HOUSE AT THE ZOO 62

DIVING BIRDS AT THE ZOO 77

TAME DIVERS 86

THE QUEST FOR THE WILD HORSE 91

ÆSTHETICS AT THE ZOO—THE ANIMAL 99
SENSE OF BEAUTY

ÆSTHETICS AT THE ZOO—SCENTS AND 109
SOUNDS

ORPHEUS AT THE ZOO—THE FIRST VISIT 115

ORPHEUS AT THE ZOO—THE SECOND VISIT 123

ORPHEUS AT THE ZOO—THE CHOICE OF 131
INSTRUMENTS

TALKING BIRDS 139

ELEPHANT LIFE IN ENGLAND 146

WANTED—A NEW MEAT 162

AN EXPERIMENT IN ANIMAL 170
PRESERVATION

“JAMRACH’S” 177

EXPRESSION IN THE ANIMAL EYE 192

LONDON BEARS 200

YOUNG ANIMALS AT THE ZOO 210

ANIMAL COLOURING 222

WILD-CATS AT THE ZOO 229

THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS 240

RARE AND BEAUTIFUL MONKEYS 248

THE LARGER MONKEYS 255

LIZARDS AND CROCODILES AT THE ZOO 263

FROM THE ANIMALS’ POINT OF VIEW 270

POSSIBLE PETS 278

THE PARIS ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS IN THE 287
TWO SIEGES

OTHER BEASTS OF BURDEN 293

THE SOLDIER’S CAMEL 302

THE CANADIAN BEAVER 311

THE TEMPER OF ANIMALS 318

CRIMINAL ANIMALS 325

A YEAR AT THE ZOO 334

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

MARTIAL HAWK EAGLE Frontispiece

POLAR BEAR 6

THE LAST GIRAFFE 38

PUMAS 62

LION AND LIONESS 72

TIGER AFTER SMELLING LAVENDER-WATER 110

AXIS DEER LISTENING 118

TIGER LISTENING TO SOFT MUSIC 136

JAPANESE PUG AND CAT 180

THE QUEEN’S LION CUB 210

OTTER PURSUING FISH 220

ARABIAN BABOON 240

MACAQUE MONKEYS 248

MONKEYS PELTING COOLIES WITH 258
FIR-CONES

ALLIGATOR 264

BACTRIAN CAMEL 302

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LIFE AT THE ZOO

THE ZOO IN A FROST

SUDDEN and severe cold, however trying to human constitutions, seems almost harmless to animal health, provided the weather be dry, frosty, and undimmed by fog. On the last Friday of November 1893, the thermometer fell so rapidly that in a few hours it registered sixteen degrees below freezing-point. On the following morning, though the sun was shining brightly, every pool and pond was sheeted with ice, and the gravel walks were as hard as granite. Yet at the Zoological Gardens, birds and beasts from tropical or semi-tropical regions, such as Burmah, Assam, Malacca, and Brazil, were abroad and enjoying the keen air; and others, which are usually invisible and curled up in their sleeping apartments till late in the day, were already abroad, sniffing at the frost and icicles, and as indifferent to the cold as Mr. Samuel Weller’s polar bear “ven he was a-practising his skating.” A visit to the Gardens in such weather suggests a modification of too rigid ideas of the limitation of certain types of animals to warm or torrid climates, and illustrates the gradual and reluctant character of the retreat of species before the advance of the glacial cold in remote ages. No creatures are, as a rule, more sensitive to cold than the whole monkey tribe. Yet there is at least one species of monkey which habitually endures the rigours of a northern winter. One of the cleverest antique Japanese drawings at South Kensington represents a troop of monkeys caught in an avalanche of snow. The grotesque discomfiture of these pink-faced monkeys rolling down the hillside, helplessly clutching at each other’s bodies and limbs, grinning and grimacing as their heads emerge from the powdery snow, is something more than the fancy of a Japanese painter. The incident is probably drawn from an actual scene, and one of the creatures, the Tcheli monkey from the mountains of Pekin, was in an open cage in the gardens, and in far better health and spirits than in the height of summer. Its fur had grown thick and close, and the naked face had assumed the dark madder-pink with which it was adorned in the drawing. When presented with sticks crusted with frozen ice, it sucked the chilly dainty with great relish, and only showed signs of sensitiveness to cold by putting its fingers in its mouth, and then sitting on its hands to warm them. The behaviour of this northern monkey is only strange by contrast with the general habits of its kind. But the indifference to cold of the capybara, a gigantic water guinea-pig from the warm rivers of Brazil, is not easy to explain. Two of these quaint creatures had left their snug sleeping apartments, and were stepping gaily among pools of half-frozen water and broken ice. One had gained an extra coat by burrowing in its straw and then emerging with a pile upon its back; and, when this fell off, retired and shuffled on another pile; but the other seemed quite content to sit without protection in the sunniest corner of its enclosure. The whole colony of porcupines (six in number), which, like most semi-nocturnal animals, are very loath to appear in public during the day unless enticed by food of a more than usually tempting character, were abroad and in the highest spirits, erecting and rattling their quills, and sitting up to inspect their visitors like gigantic rabbits. It is difficult to conceive that a coat of quills can impart much warmth to its wearer; but towards Christmas the quaint black-and-white garment of the porcupine has almost the appearance of a mantle of stiff feathers; and the crest on the head and shoulders, sloping backwards along the spine, combines, with the black face and Roman nose, to suggest a comical resemblance between the fully-fledged porcupine and one of Buffalo Bill’s Sioux warriors in full costume of eagles’ plumes.

During the first cold of winter the plumage of the birds and the coats of the fur-bearing animals in the Zoo are hardly inferior to those of their wild kindred. Both the eagle and the American bison are in condition to excite the cupidity of an Indian brave. The bull bison, which in summer has a strangely ragged and “moth-eaten” appearance, with big patches of bare skin showing on its flanks, is now covered with a “buffalo-robe” of magnificent proportions and the richest colour and texture. From shoulders to tail, the body is wrapped in a mass of brown felted fur. The mane hangs down below the knees, and a shock of black and silky hair covers the head and face, almost concealing the horns and the sullen, bloodshot eye. This bull is said to be the largest of its race in this country, and is probably as fine a specimen of the male bison as ever led its band across the frozen plains of the North-West. It was brought to England by Lord Lorne after the completion of his stay in Canada as Viceroy of the Dominion, and spent its earlier days at the Home Park at Windsor, whence it was transferred on exchange to the Zoo.

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. 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 broad 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. It would seem that all those species, such as the wild boar, or the buffalo and bison, which are widely distributed on many continents, adapt themselves rapidly to changed conditions of climate; and those wild boars which have been bred for several generations in this country and in Scotland, are rapidly developing a thicker and rougher coat of hair than their Indian cousins. It is probable that the tiger from Turkestan, if allowed the use of the outer cages, from which the Indian tigers and other large carnivora are withdrawn during the winter, would develop the thick and beautiful coat with which the northern tiger is represented in Chinese paintings. The bears, though so well wrapped up, take the frost as a hint to hibernate, and were for the most part fast asleep. Those which occupy cages facing the morning sun uncurl as the day grows brighter, and exhibit coats in the utmost perfection of winter growth. The black, brown, and cinnamon bears have at this time a bloom upon their fur which the utmost skill of the furrier fails to reproduce if the animal is killed at any other period of the year. In Southern and Central Russia many proprietors own large estates devoted to breeding horses and cattle. A menagerie of bears is often added to this. These are killed at the right season, and their skins sold in the best condition. Cloaks made from the skins of the six-months-old cubs have been sold for from £600 to £1000. Of the Polar bears, one, the older and larger, seems disposed to follow the example of the brown and black species, and to doze through the cold weather. The she-bear, much smaller and younger than its mate, takes its bath as usual, and plays with the floating ice like a baby with the soap. There it exhibits the most astonishing antics, turning back-somersaults, and standing on its head, or flinging out plates of ice with its nose and paws. 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. One is tempted to speculate whether this prudence is accompanied by any rational knowledge of the probable inadequacy of their stock to meet their natural wants. If their sense of quantity bears any proportion to their industry and skill in engineering, they must be full of anxiety and misgivings, for the few branches given to them are only make-believe, and they are wholly dependent on their captors for food. For some reason the rare European beavers, from the banks of the Rhone, have not thriven at the Zoo. Four out of six had died at the date at which this visit was made, and only one is now left in the Gardens.

POLAR BEAR. From a photograph by Gambier Bolton.
]

The demeanour of the inmates of the artificially-warmed houses ought not to differ greatly in frost, as the ordinary temperature is nominally preserved. In the Elephant and Antelope Houses such a day as that which we describe has little effect beyond giving an added briskness of demeanour to such creatures as are not, like the elephant and rhinoceros, too bulky and majestic to be exhilarated by mere accidents of temperature.

The Antelope House is redolent with a delicious perfume of the finest hay, and its graceful inmates nibble at their fragrant breakfast with the same dainty selectness which marks their habits at meals on less appetizing days. Many of the larger kinds, lying in their neat stalls, look like some glorified form of Oriental cattle. 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. The only creature which showed some effects of the exhilaration in the frosty air was the beautiful little Nagore antelope, the only living specimen, we believe, of this rare animal now in Europe. In form it is almost like a large gazelle, with lyre-shaped horns, a golden fawn-coloured skin, of perfectly uniform tone, set off by large and brilliant black eyes. This antelope was unusually active and friendly, standing on its slender hind feet, and reaching its head up to be caressed and fed.

In the open paddocks and runs of the smaller deer and wild-fowl, there was great good-temper and content. The Japanese deer were all curled up sleeping in the cold air round their food-box, which was filled with chopped straw, bran, and oats, and swarming with impudent Zoo sparrows. These little robbers, as also the Zoo starlings, are in such good case from the abundance of food left at their disposal by the fastidious strangers in the cages and paddocks, that, like the owls during the plagues of mice on the Pampas, they defy the weather and the seasons, and marry and bring up irregular families irrespective of the almanac. Dozens of them, as well as many of the starlings, had selected this particular cold morning of all others to take a bath. The gradually sloping drinking-pools in most of the runs, especially the tortoises’ baths, which have a wide shallow entrance, exactly suit their wants. Many were washing and splashing in the pools in the swine runs, while others were drying themselves in rows on the sunny wall above the styes, with an immense amount of fuss and vulgarly loud conversation.

The gulls were particularly noisy, and playing at a new game with bits of ice, which they picked up from the broken edges of their ponds, and let fall on the sound ice. They then scrambled and fought for the pieces as they slid on the slippery surface. One big gull swallowed a large triangular piece, which stuck for some time in its throat, and evidently gave it much discomfort until the sharp edges melted. The ravens in the crow-cages were also much pleased with the broken ice, and were busy hiding all the pieces in holes round the edges of their aviary. One of the birds was evidently not satisfied with the concealment offered by the cranny into which it had poked a large fragment, so after considering for some time, it drew it out again, rubbed it in sand till it was well covered with grit, and then pushed it back, protected by a coating of colour “adapted to environment.”

The heating of the Monkey House had been carefully looked to during the night, and beyond showing a disposition to huddle together and sleep, the common monkeys betrayed little obvious sensibility to the bright dry cold outside. But the delicate little marmosets and small tropical South American species were, with the exception of the Capuchins, removed to the warmer inner room behind the glass palace. One creature only seemed penetrated by the frost, a sleeping lemur. It was clinging to the bars of its cage, its hands grasping the rods, its two front arms stretched out, and its head, heavy with sleep, drooping between them. Yet, though steeped in slumber, it was shaken from moment to moment by spasms of shivering, its body conscious and responsive to the cold, though its drowsy brain was insensible to the warnings of physical _malaise_.

Winter in the Insect House is the time of incubation and sleep. All the beautiful forms of tropical moths and insects, which burst into life in the butterfly form in May, are sleeping in their pitcher-shaped cocoons, or buried in moss and mould. Only the great Goliath beetle, with a body like a well-blacked boot on which cream has been spilt, and immense stag-like horns, was alternately eating melon and sipping highly-sweetened tea, two indigestible forms of food on which it had made an almost uninterrupted meal for seven weeks.

From another point of view the demeanour of the semi-tropical birds in this sudden wave of cold was even more interesting than the power of adaptation to climate shown by so many quadrupeds. The whole pheasant tribe, perhaps the most beautiful, as a class, of any family of birds, are in the acme of plumage and condition. The Himalayas and China are the main homes of these gorgeous creatures, and we are not surprised to see in Regent’s Park the metallic lustre of the Monauls, or the scarlet, orange, and gold of the rarer Chinese varieties, in equal perfection with that attained in the glens of Nepaul, or the mountains of Pekin. But the Argus pheasant is a native of Sumatra and Borneo, the companion of the trogons and the ourang-outang; yet the cock-bird was displaying its beauties in the open air, among leaves and grass tipped with hoar-frost, and showed plumage so close and perfect, that it was impossible to doubt that the colder climate had, if possible, added a lustre to its unrivalled wealth of ornament. It is to be regretted that the eggs laid in the previous summer were not fertile, else the development of perhaps the most perfect instance of animal pattern might have received further explanation from the processes of growth in the plumage of the young. One tender nestling from the tropics was being reared at the Zoo, though not exposed to the rigour of December frost. In October 1893 a young king vulture arrived from South America—a round, fluffy ball of white down, with a smooth black head like a negro baby, and as helpless as a young pigeon. It grew rapidly, and at the time when this paper was written, was the most interesting and intelligent specimen of a young carnivorous bird that the writer has yet seen. 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. When frightened or shy in the presence of strangers, it lays its head on the ground and “shams dead,” like a young plover, though almost as large as a turkey. But it soon loses all fear, and takes food or pulls at the garments of its visitors with amusing confidence. But the young vulture is an accidental visitor. The frosts of winter are mainly interesting at the Zoo as the time when the inmates exhibit the full beauty and vitality of vigorous maturity.

NOTE.—Since the above notes were written, the young king vulture
has grown to full maturity, and is an even more interesting bird
than its early promise indicated. At the end of July 1894 it was
full-grown and in perfect plumage, every feather being distinct
and unbroken. 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.

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THE GHOSTS OF THE TROPICAL FOREST.

PERHAPS the rarest, certainly the least known to man of all the creatures which, by a strange chance, find their way to the Gardens of the Zoological Society in Regent’s Park, are the denizens of the Tropical Forest. We say forest, because, though divided by the dissociable ocean, there is only one great forest which belts the globe. The notion of the physical symmetry of the world, which fascinated the old geographers, and led Herodotus to surmise that the course of the great river of Africa must of necessity conform in the main to that of the Danube in the opposite continent, was wrong in theory and application. But shifting the guiding forces from the control of original and plastic design to the influence of the dominant Sun, the theory still holds good; and while the tropical heats remain constant and undisturbed, so must the tropical forest flourish and endure, with its inseparable concomitants of vegetable growth overpowering and replacing the marvellous rapidity of vegetable decay.

To the naturalist, the most marked feature of the great tropical forest south of the Equator, is the inequality in the balance of Nature between vegetable and animal life. From the forests of Brazil to the forests of the Congo, through the wooded heights of northern Madagascar, to the tangled jungles of the Asiatic Archipelago and the impenetrable woods of New Guinea, the boundless profusion of vegetable growth is unmatched by any similar abundance in animal forms. A few brilliant birds of strange shape and matchless plumage, such as the toucans of Guinea and the Amazon, or the birds of paradise in the Moluccas or the Papuan Archipelago, haunt the loftiest trees, and from time to time fall victims to the blow-pipe or arrow of the natives, who scarcely dare to penetrate that foodless region, even for such rich spoils, until incantation and sacrifice have propitiated the offended spirits of the woods; but except the sloth and the giant ant-eater, there is hardly to be found in the tropical regions of the New World a quadruped which can excite the curiosity of the naturalist, or form food even for the wildest of mankind. In the corresponding tracts of Africa and the Asiatic Archipelago, the rare four-footed animals that live in the solitary forests are, for the most part, creatures of the night. Unlike the lively squirrels and marten-cats of temperate regions, they do not leave their hiding-places till the tropical darkness has fallen on the forest, when they seek their food, not on the surface of the ground, but, imitating the birds, ascend to the upper surface of the ocean of trees, and at the first approach of dawn seek refuge from the hateful day in the dark recesses of some aged and hollow trunk. There is nothing like the loris or the lemur in the fauna of temperate Europe. We may rather compare them to a race of arboreal moles, the condition of whose life is darkness and invisibility. But, unlike the moles, the smaller members of these rarely seen tribes are among the most beautiful and interesting creatures of the tropics, though the extreme difficulty of capturing creatures whose whole life is spent on the loftiest forest trees, is further increased by the reluctance of the natives to enter the deserted and pathless forests. The beautiful lemurs, most of which are found in Madagascar, are further believed by the Malagasi to embody the spirits of their ancestors; and the weird and plaintive cries with which they fill the groves at night, uttered by creatures whose bodies, as they cling to the branches, are invisible, and whose delicate movements are noiseless, may well have left a doubt on the minds of the first discoverers of the island as to whether these were not in truth the cries and wailings of true _lemures_, the unquiet ghosts of the departed.

Several of the larger lemurs are to be found at the Zoo, and though these suffer so much if unduly exposed to the light that before long they lose their sight, they may occasionally be seen in their cages. Others, the rarest and most delicate members of the race, are so entirely creatures of darkness that their exposure to daylight seems to benumb all their faculties. They appear drugged and stupefied, and, though capable of movement, seem indisposed either to attempt escape when handled, or to move in any other direction than that of shelter from the odious day. Even food is refused before nightfall, and, unlike the epicure’s ortolans, which awake and feed in a darkened room whenever the rays of a lamp suggest the sunrise, the lemur only consumes its meal of fruit and insects when nightfall has aroused its drowsy wits. These midnight habits clearly unfit it for public exhibition at the Zoo, and the last and rarest of the tribe which have arrived in London occupy a private room adjacent to the monkey palace, in common with other lemurs and loris, and a few of the most delicate marmosets and tropical monkeys which have escaped the rigours of an English winter. One large cage, which, in spite of the label “Coquerel’s Lemur” placed upon it, seemed at the time of our last visit to contain nothing but a pile of hay, is the dwelling-place of these latest guests. After displacing layer after layer of the hay, the two sleeping beauties were discovered lying in a ball, each with its long furry tail wrapped round the other, in the deepest and most unconscious repose. When at last the two were separated, and the least reluctant was taken in the hand, the extreme beauty of the little “ghost” was at once apparent. In colour it is a rich cinnamon, fading to lavender beneath. The texture of the fur is like nothing but that of the finest and best-finished seal-skin jacket, only far deeper and closer, so that the hand sinks into it as into a bed of moss. The head is large and most intelligent, the face being set with a pair of very large, round, hazel eyes, in which the lines of the orbit seem not to radiate from the centre, but to be arranged in circles, like the layers of growth in the section of a tree. The long tail is at the base almost as wide as the body, tapering to a point, and covered with deep fur. But the greatest beauty of form which this lemur owns is the shape of its hands and feet. These exquisite little members are so far an exact reproduction of the human hand, that not only the hands, but also the feet, own a fully-developed thumb. But each finger, as well as the thumb, expands into a tiny disc, as in certain tree-frogs, so that the little hands may cling to the tree with the tightness of an air-pump. It is plain, as the half-sleeping lemur climbs over the arms and shoulders of its visitor, that it takes him for a tree. 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.

A near relation of the lemurs is a beautiful little creature, whose uncouth native name has not been replaced, called the “moholi.” It only differs from the lemurs in the shape of the ears, which in the moholi are either pricked up, like those of a bat, or folded down on its head at will. It has the same wonderful brown eyes, so large and round that they seem to occupy the greater part of the head; the moholi is, in fact, “all eyes.” As it stretches its slender arms out wide against the keeper’s chest, and turns its head to look at the visitors, it has the most winning expression of any quadruped we have ever seen. The coat, of a pinkish-grey above, turns into light saffron below, and the texture is less deep than the lemur’s fur. In touch it resembles floss-silk, thickly piled. The “Slow Loris,” from Malacca, is a tailless lemur. In exchange it has received a fretful temper, which seems a permanent trait in this species. When wakened it growls, bites, and fights, until once more allowed to sleep in peace. This loris hardly falls short of the beauty of the lemurs. The fur is cream-coloured, with a cinnamon stripe running from the head down the back. Of the three species which we have described, the first seems to combine some of the characteristics of the monkey and the mole, the second of the squirrel and the bat, the last those of the monkey and the weasel tribe. The “Slender Loris” is a still greater puzzle. It has all the characteristic “points” of the lemurs, without the tail. In size it resembles a squirrel; but its movements are so strange and deliberate, and so unlike those of any other quadruped, that it seems impossible to guess either at its habits or its purpose in creation. Each hand or foot is slowly raised from the branch on which it rests, brought forward, and set down again; the fingers then close on the wood until its grasp is secure, when the other limbs begin to move, like those of a mechanical toy. As we looked, its “affinities” with other types presently suggested themselves. It is a _furry-coated chameleon_. The round, protruding eyes, the slow mechanical movements, and the insect-feeding habits, are identical, except that the loris hunts by night and the chameleon by day. The loris even possesses an auxiliary tongue, which aids it in catching moths, just as the development of the same member marks the insect-catching lizard. From dawn till dusk all the lemurs are the very bond-slaves of sleep, hypnotized in the literal sense, drugged and steeped in slumber. Had the old poets known them, had the Phœnician sailors brought them back when they visited the land of Ophir, they would have been the consecrated companions of Somnus. Ovid’s famous picture of the Cave of Sleep, and the noiseless hall where

“A couch of down, raised high on ebony,
Self-coloured, sombre, draped with sable pall,
Stands in the midst, whereon that god doth lie,
While all his limbs relaxed in slumber fall,”

wants but one touch to complete the drowsy theme—a sleeping lemur curled up on Somnus’ dusky pillow.

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THE BUTTERFLY FARM AT THE ZOO

A COLLECTION of tropical butterflies and moths reared in the Zoological Gardens was exhibited in the rooms of the Royal Society at their annual _soirée_ in 1893. 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. Readers of _Kenelm Chillingly_, one of the latest and most extravagant of Bulwer Lytton’s romances, may remember that one of the airy fancies of his youthful and impossible heroine, is to keep pet butterflies in cages, and to shed floods of tears over their untimely death. They manage things better in the butterfly farm at the Zoo, where the brilliant insects, after their brief day is over, pass by a kind of metempsychosis from the catalogue of living to that of dead specimens, and figure anew in the list of “additions to the collections of the Society.”

It would be difficult to picture a more elegant or more interesting sight than the hatching of the butterfly-broods in the Insect House during the first days of summer heat. The glass cases, filled with damp moss and earth, and adorned with portions of tree-trunks or plants suited to the habits of the moths, are peopled by these exquisite and delicate creatures, as one after another separates itself from the chrysalis-case in which it has been sleeping all the winter, and, fluttering upwards with weak and uncertain movements, exposes its beauties to the light. The wings of the largest kind, such as the great orange-brown “Atlas” moth, are as wide as those of a missel-thrush; and the great size of this and other species increases the strange likeness to bird-forms which is so marked, even in the smaller English hawk-moths. The giant moths of the tropics, unlike the rest of the insect world, have faces and features not devoid of expression. Some resemble birds; others cats. Some are covered with long, soft plumage, like the feathers of the marabout, or the plumes of swans. Others are wrapped in a silky mantle like an Angora kitten, or clothed in ermine and sables. The depth and softness of these downy mantles make the impulse to stroke them suggest itself at once; yet when the head-keeper lifts them from the branch on which they rest, as a falconer lifts his hawk, the feeling that they are neither moths nor animals, but long-winged birds, is equally irresistible. Form and texture suggest endless analogies with the higher animals; but the scheme of colour is peculiar to the tribe of which these are the most beautiful examples. In the Cecropian silk-moths, for example, some five or six of which, at the time this paper was written, were preening their feathery wings on the lichen-covered bark of an ancient oak-trunk. The body seems thickly wrapped in feathers, and, like the wings, is of an exquisite mottled grey, the colour of the natural wool of the Cashmere goat. But the legs, antennæ, and parts of the wings are boldly painted a rich red madder-brown. The Indian moon-moth is perhaps the most delicate in colouring of all. The wings are of the palest green, and as wide as those of a swallow, the tint of the aqua-marine. The uniform faint colour is only broken by a few crescent spots of a darker tint. But the whole of the front edge of the wing is “bound” in velvet, of the colour of dark-red wine. The body is wrapped in thick and downy feathers of the purest white, from which the soft legs and feet emerge, stained to match the claret edging of the wing. Across the head, and lying back against the dark shoulders, are the fern-shaped antennæ of pale-green. Thus, this lovely creature possesses but three hues,—pale-green, claret-colour, and white; but these are so graded and distributed, and so modified by the contrasted beauty of the texture of the semi-transparent wing, the thick and downy body, and the delicate flesh-like legs, that the creature seems rather the realization of some painter’s dream than one among hundreds of silk-producing insects. We once heard the generic difference between angels and fairies stated with all the certainty which was due to the youth of the speaker:—“Angels have birds’ wings, and fairies have butterflies’ wings, of course!” was the indignant answer to the difficulty raised. Imps, too, have bats’ wings. But the wings of the moth have not yet been appropriated to the human embodiment of the unseen denizens of the air. There is a softness and reserve of colouring, and an uncertainty of outline in the moth’s wing, which mark it at once as something distinct from the sharply cut, and brilliantly coloured forms of their butterfly relations.

Perhaps the most brightly coloured moths which are raised in the house are the _Eacles regalis_, which are covered with a net-work of orange, rivalling in colour the inner flesh of a melon, on a ground of greenish-grey; and the _Eacles imperialis_, in which an exquisite shade of “old rose” invades and is lost in a rich cream-coloured ground.

Not the least beautiful among the giant moths is the splendid creature from the cocoons of which the wild silks of India are wound. This is a far larger and finer moth than that which produces the Chinese tussur-silk. Its wings are “old gold” in colour, with two large transparent eyes on each, fringed with rose-colour. These, according to Hindoo superstition, are the finger-marks of the god Vishnu, and the Tussur moth is, therefore, sacred to that deity. But it is among the wild demon-worshipping Santhals that the Indian silk-moth has its native home. In the boundless upland forests, the trees on which it feeds are covered with thousands of the cocoons, which are gathered by these wild tribes, and sold to the silk-winders of the plains. Numbers of these fine cocoons line the cases at the Zoo, each with living pupa inside. The cocoons are beautiful objects in themselves, nearly the size of a walnut in the rind, and hanging by stalks firmly twisted to the supporting twigs, like rows of melons. Their colour varies through all shades of silvery or purplish-grey, streaked all over, like the eggs of the yellow-hammer, with fine irregular dark-purple lines. The silk threads of which they are woven are flat, like tape, not round, like the ordinary floss-silk of Europe; and it is to this flat and irregular form of the thread that the beauty of woven tussur-silk is mainly due. It may be doubted whether the cultivation of the Tussur moth will spread to the West, like that of the common “silkworm.” But the time is not far distant when this, and probably others of the fifty-nine species of silk-producing larvæ which were exhibited in the Colonial and Indian Exhibition, will become an additional source of wealth in the wide forest-regions of our Indian Empire.

The area of the jungle forest in the Santhal country, in which grow the trees whose leaves form the best food of these silkworms, is vast beyond any probable use which the most enterprising silk-grower conceives. “As far as the eye could reach from any rising ground,” writes Mr. Thomas Wardle, in his _History of the Growth of the Tussur Silk Industry_, “and for hundreds of square miles, there lay a forest in which it seemed that any quantity of the tussur of the future might be cultivated, and I think it is worthy of the attention of the Government of India to encourage in every way a greatly increased production, and not to be behind China in this respect, remembering that when I showed how tussur-silk could be used, the demand which sprang up was chiefly met by the greater quickness of the Chinese.”

Not only the moths, but even the caterpillars, or larvæ of the various silk-moths, are as beautiful as any fabric which is woven from the glossy fibres of their cocoons. Let no one despise “worms and creeping things” after once seeing these exquisitely formed and coloured creatures. The larvæ of most may be seen in late July in the Insect House, feeding on green leaves in the cases. The finest are those of the Cecropian silk-moth; they are of a blue-green, with a soft bloom like that on some succulent plant. The whole body is clothed with alternate lines of turquoise and amber studs, specked with black, polished and shining like jewels. Those that have spun their cocoons are wrapped in jackets of light-brown silk, into which strips of green leaves of the plum-tree are twisted for protection. The Ailanthus silk-moth has a pale-grey larva, with little ornaments in rows, shaped like the flowers of the stone-crop, and dotted with black. The moth itself is strangely beautiful, fawn-coloured, with bold wavy lines of black, grey, and pink. The Promethean silk-moth has a larva of pale Cambridge blue, with yellow and crimson studs. Not even the sea anemones in their native waters are more beautiful than these fugitive forms assumed by the undeveloped silk-moths of the East.

In their scheme of colour, the butterflies are to the moths what the fabrics of Europe are to the webs of Cashmere or the carpets of Daghestan. A score of the lovely swallow-tailed butterfly may often be seen fluttering in their cage. The bottom of their glass mansion is covered with short pieces of osier-stick, each one of which is pierced up the centre with a tunnel, at the end of which lies the pupa of that strange instance of protective mimicry, the hornet clear-wing. Another case is full of the scarce pale variety of the swallow-tail, and a third of the American swallow-tail, the female of which is black, spangled with what seems a shining dust of sapphires. But perhaps the most beautiful of all the butterfly broods is the swarm of _Papilio Cresphontes_. At the time of hatching, the case is full of these lovely butterflies, black above, with beaded spots of pale yellow; yellow below, with beaded lines of black. When last seen by the writer, some were flying from side to side of the cage; some had alighted, or were in the act of alighting, and others on the moss at the bottom were sipping the juices of ripe grapes.

Among the butterfly cages is a glass case which, since its inmates first found their way to the Zoo, has never failed to excite the utmost interest and curiosity. On the floor of the box, partly sheltered by a few green plants, are ten or a dozen gold buttons, with a red-gold centre, on a lighter gold setting, edged by a round, semi-transparent rim. If watched attentively, the buttons presently move about on invisible legs, and perhaps one suddenly splits, puts out a pair of wings, and flies. These astonishing beetles, which are at present unnamed, are from Ceylon. Above, they exactly resemble an embossed gold sleeve-button, with a rim of yellow talc. Laid on their backs, the under-side of a golden beetle appears, surrounded with the same semi-transparent rim. Trap-door spiders also flourish in the Insect House, and have made several caves, with most ingenious doors, in a large piece of rotten wood with rugged lichen-covered bark. The doors are quite irregular in shape, made to fit the surface of the hole in which the spider lives, and are of all sizes, from that of a walnut-shell to a pea. The door exactly fits the orifice, however irregular its shape, and is so cleverly covered with pieces of wood and lichen woven into the fabric, that it exactly resembles the surrounding bark; and even a prying tit might omit to probe it with its bill.

The one hideous and repulsive creature in this good company is the great tarantula spider. It is like a long-legged, hairy crab, quite seven inches from claw to claw, with enormous brown poison fangs like a beak. Two of these spiders, discovered in a tent at Assouan, occupied by officers of the Heavy Camel Corps, put the whole of the inmates to flight in their pyjamas, and the only wonder is that they ever ventured to return before daylight. There is something strangely repulsive in this low type of life, which nevertheless makes a prey of such beautiful and highly-developed animals as humming-birds, and even the small and fragile quadrupeds of the tropical forest.

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PATTERNS ON LIVING ANIMALS.

EARLY in the spring of 1893, the Marquis of Hamilton brought with him from Trinidad a number of little fish, less in size than a half-grown minnow, which were presented to the Zoological Society, and were to be seen at Easter swimming in a glass bowl, among a thin growth of water weeds, in the warm chamber in which the tropical moths and butterflies are hatched.

Being small and elegant, they have a long and ugly scientific name, the _Girardinus Guppyi_. In the absence of a label, the writer mistook them for the gudgeon, which form the food of the more rapacious fishes, and was about to suggest that they would be interesting material for an experiment with the electric eels, when a ray of sunlight flashing through the bowl revealed the astonishing fact that these tiny fishes possessed beauties of ornament not exceeded in kind by any of the most exquisite birds of the tropics.