Chapter II: Part 2

Each of the little creatures, though so frail and so delicately formed that its body offered a scarcely greater obstacle to the passage of the sunlight than the water in which it swam, was decorated on either side by one, or sometimes two, of those exquisite ornaments seen in the greatest perfection in the train of the peacock, which are perhaps best described as the “peacock-eye.” It was no mere spot, lying in a ring of a different colour, such as decorates the sides of a trout or salmon, but a perfectly-developed peacock-gem, lying in its gorgeous rings of blue, green, and gold, equally rich and dark in tint, and even more striking from its contrast with the colourless and semi-transparent body of the creature it adorned. The analogy with the pattern on the peacock’s tail was even more complete than that which a first glance disclosed; for on many of the fish a third or rudimentary eye appeared, fainter and elongated, like a smudge of wet colour, and corresponding exactly with the gradation or evolutionary process of ornament, which Charles Darwin noted in the side-feathers of the peacock-train. This wonderful decoration, which was assumed, like the brilliant red and emerald of the English sticklebacks, for the period of courtship only, disappears later in the year; and the creatures abide in plain clothes till next spring. But the character of the ornament they wear suggests a further and separate interest, beyond that which their beauty naturally claims. _Pattern_, by which we mean the repetition of certain and regular forms, so as to produce an ornament which pleases the eye without making any demands on the mind, is by no means a common form of natural decoration in the higher animals. 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. But that effect, so far as it is given in a single individual, is, as a rule, only due to the fact that the creature is itself symmetrical, and that the lines and markings on one side of the body are repeated upon the other. The stripes upon a tiger’s skin, for instance, though in the nature of ornament, are not a pattern, though a number of tigers’ skins laid side by side might produce to the eye the effect of pattern. The patterns themselves are also few in number; and these limited and favourite forms of enrichment are applied indiscriminately, and with a certain indifference to congruity of species, yet with unfailing success in the result, to the most widely-different forms in the animal creation. Take, for example, the most complex, and perhaps the most beautiful of all, natural ornaments, which appears in the “eyes” in the peacock’s tail. The same pattern, with slight variations, is found, not only on the feathers of the beautiful grouse-like Polyplectron of Malacca, though modified, as Darwin noted, by the white edging, which makes it even more conspicuous than the bronze circle round the peacock-eye, but also in the peacock-pheasant, and the Ocelated Turkey of Honduras. In this splendid bird, the “eyes” are placed in a row at the end of the tail-feathers, and upon some of the upper tail-coverts, and are rimmed with gold. The same pattern, by a leap from an order of birds not distantly connected, appears in undiminished beauty in the little fish from Trinidad; and with an almost incredible difference of subject and sameness in effect, in the peacock-butterfly and eyed hawk-moth of England, in the emperor-moth, and a number of allied insects; and lastly, with a startling resemblance, in the centre of the beautiful peacock iris, which is now cultivated in English gardens. It would, perhaps, not be difficult to add to the instances of repetition of this particular pattern which we have given, by a careful survey of the specimens exhibited in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington. But the fact of the repetition of the “peacock-eye” as ornament in the case of birds, fishes, moths, butterflies, and lastly of a common and beautiful flower, will sufficiently illustrate the fact to which we draw attention. The pattern, if less elaborate and exact in reproduction when found among the moths and butterflies, is an “impressionist” rendering of the same scheme, and if it were the reproduction of some human hand, would leave no doubt as to the identity of the motive and idea in each. The remaining natural patterns, even though of less complex form, may almost be counted on the fingers of the hand, and are applied with the same careless profusion to the adornment of creatures, like and unlike, without distinction, though the range is in most cases far more limited than in that of the peacock-eye. The most perfect form of the cup-and-ball pattern, which is seen in the feathers of the Argus pheasant, seems only to reappear on the wings of the Brahma moth, and of the eyed tortoise, though in one or two other small tortoises the effect of the ball ornament is produced by an actual embossing of the shell. Yet even in this case, not only is the form of the pattern reproduced, but also the beautiful brown colouring, which, by its soberness and exquisite gradation, produces the effect of low relief in monochrome. The wave-line, the spot, the scale-pattern, the bar-pattern, and, in rare instances, a chequer or diaper in black and white, almost exhaust the list of other natural patterns, and these, like the peacock-eye, recur in non-allied species in exactly the same arrangement, not only of form, but of colour. A most effective spot-pattern is that in which a rich chestnut ground is covered with minute white or cream-coloured spots. The result is most rich and beautiful, and it seems to be reserved for use in highly-decorated creatures of any class or family. It is seen at its best on the breast of the lovely harlequin-duck, in which the whole surface shines like enamel. But exactly the same pattern in the same colours appears on the neck of such a widely-different species as the chestnut-eared finch of Australia; and with the order of colour reversed, under the wings of the bar-breasted finch, both of which may be seen in the Parrot House at the Zoological Gardens. In the smaller wing-feathers of the Argus pheasant, this spot-pattern is reproduced on almost the same minute scale as on the harlequin-duck and the little finches. Then by a sudden change it is found on the back of the larvæ of the _Gallium_ hawk-moth, a chestnut-coloured insect, with a row of minute white spots down the middle of its back, and two rows of rather larger white spots, one on each side. The larvæ of the spurge hawk-moth, of the white-satin moth, and of the sycamore dagger-moth, also show it. Among butterflies, the _Salatura Melanippus_ has a border of white spots on chestnut ground round the edges of its wings; and the same arrangement may be seen on a shell—some kind of _Gastropoda_, if we remember rightly—which is “commonly observed” on cottage mantelpieces. The “scale-pattern” is generally due in the case of birds to the natural shape of the feathers, and not to surface-pattern. A good example is the neck of the Amherst pheasant, in which the feathers are scale-shaped, and being edged with black, produce a beautiful pattern, and the neck of the golden pheasant, in which the corresponding feathers have square ends, and the black edging merely falls into parallel lines. The perfect rectangular diaper pattern is extremely rare in birds, but not uncommon in the larvæ of moths and butterflies. It is seen in perfection on the backs of the great northern diver and its relations; and in a faint reproduction on the wings of the wood-leopard moth. A very elegant and decorative ornament is the “wave-line” pattern. This, like the chestnut ground and white spot, is constantly reproduced in the same colours, black on grey, or grey on black. It appears on the side of the wild duck, on Swinhoe’s pheasant, in which bird it is the main form of ornament, on the neck of the grass-parakeet, on the sand-grouse, on several common species of iris, and on the wings of the Brahma moths, surrounding the ball ornament to which we have referred. The inference to be drawn from these coincidences must be left to practical zoologists. But the fact that natural patterns, as applied to animals and plants, while at times showing the utmost elaboration of design, are so limited in number, and applied with so little modification in colour or form to birds, fishes, insects, and plants alike, seems an inviting subject for inquiry.

Meantime it would be a charming amusement to any one who desires a new and not too exacting intellectual interest in a visit to the Zoological Gardens, to go from the aviaries to the wild-fowl ponds, and from the pheasants in their runs to the finches in their cages in the Parrot House, and make a complete list of the possessors of each form of these distinct and arbitrary animal patterns. By so doing, he would incidentally secure an acquaintance with the most beautiful of all the birds, for the possessors of these ornaments are generally among the most elaborately marked of any of their species. The list given above is far from exhaustive, and as the first, and often the most pleasing, part of these minor inquiries into nature consists in the collection and classifying of likenesses, it offers an attraction as great as any obvious inducements to observation in the Society’s collection. Some day we shall perhaps see in the cases at South Kensington a collection of examples of the repetition of ornament, as well as of the evolution of ornament in nature. The origin of the first is now explained. But on what hypothesis can we account for the second?

The observation of these patterns should extend throughout the year if it is to be complete. The typical pheasants are only in perfect plumage in winter, and these delicate ornaments are much affected by the physical condition of the wearer. In the fish, as we have seen, they almost entirely disappear after the bodily vigour of the spring season has departed. In late summer and early autumn the pheasants and peacocks are moulting; the tropical moths, on the other hand, which have such beautiful analogies with the bird plumage, are hatching out in May. The pretty little tropical finches take far less time to moult than some of the larger birds, or are less affected in plumage, and the minute but accurate reproductions of the patterns on the wood-duck, wild duck, and jungle-fowl which appear on their diminutive bodies may be seen at almost any season in the Parrot House. The flower gardening at the Zoo is now maintained at so high a pitch of elaboration and beauty, that it would not be difficult to provide instances of animal pattern in beds of peacock iris, and of other plants which reproduce the less elaborate but equally distinct forms of pattern of which examples have been given above.

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THE GIRAFFE’S OBITUARY.

THE winter of the year 1892, like the days of pestilence before the walls of Troy, was fatal both to man and beast. Even the carefully tended inmates of the Zoological Society’s Gardens did not escape; and as the new year opened with the death within a week of “Sally,” most human and most intelligent of apes, and of her neighbour “Tim,” the silver gibbon, who was almost as great a favourite of the London public as the educated chimpanzee, so the spring saw the death of the two beautiful giraffes, the sole survivors left in the collection. The experience which the Society has had in maintaining its stock of these interesting creatures has not, however, been altogether discouraging. Since the first four specimens were brought to England in 1836, no less than seventeen fawns have been born in the Gardens, and many of these lived to grow up. But the stock gradually diminished, until in 1866 two were burnt to death in their stable, and a third died of old age, leaving only the pair now lost.

THE LAST GIRAFFE. From a photograph by Gambier
Bolton.
]

The time of their death, unfortunately, coincided with the complete interruption of the ancient trade in wild animals up the Valley of the Nile by the Mahdi’s occupation of the Soudan, a trade as old as the days of Solomon, never organized, often interrupted for centuries, yet always ready to spring up again, and always dependent for its rarest products on the free navigation of the river of Egypt. Giraffes—which, not excepting the hippopotamus, have most excited the imagination of European capitals after the long intervals in which they have remained unseen by the nations of the West—seem always to have found their way hither from the land of the Pharaohs. The first seen in Europe since the “tertiary epoch” was obtained from Alexandria by Julius Cæsar, and exhibited at the Circensian Games to crowds who expected, from its name, “camelopard,” to find in it a combination of the size of a camel and the ferocity of a panther. Pliny, who described it, echoed the public disappointment. “It was as quiet,” he wrote, “as a sheep.” The trade probably reached its maximum after it became the fashion to exhibit combats of wild beasts at Rome; yet even then giraffes seem to have been scarce in the popular shows, though Pompey could exhibit five hundred lions at a time, and the Emperor Titus, at the dedication of his new theatre, caused the slaughter of five thousand wild beasts. Either the number of wild animals in the provinces must have been beyond anything since known, or the Roman Governors must have used their despotic powers freely to oblige their friends. No doubt they did this. Cælius, Cicero’s gossiping correspondent, says, when writing to him in Cilicia—“In nearly every letter I have written to you about panthers. It is a great shame. Pray send to Pamphylia, where most are said to be taken. You have only to give an order, and the thing is done. You know I hate trouble, while you like it, and yet you will not do this, which is no trouble. I have sent men to look after them and bring them here.”

Despots are the best collectors; and from the fall of the Roman Empire till the arrival of those placed in the Zoological Gardens in 1836, the rare appearances of the giraffe in Europe were in each case due to the munificence of Eastern Sultans and Pashas. The Prince of Damascus gave one to the Emperor Frederick II. in 1215; and the Soldan of Egypt presented another to Lorenzo the Magnificent, which became the pet of Florence, and used to be allowed to walk in the streets, and take the presents of fruit and cakes extended to it from the balconies. From this time the giraffe was not seen in Europe until, in 1827, the Pasha of Egypt sent four to Constantinople, Venice, England, and France respectively. The giraffe sent to England was in bad health, and soon died; but the Parisians went wild with excitement over the Pasha’s present. It had spent the winter at Marseilles, and throve there on the milk of the cows which the Pasha had sent over for its use from Egypt. The Prefect of Marseilles had the arms of France embroidered on its body-cloth, and it entered Paris escorted by a Darfour negro, Hassan, an Arab, a Marseilles groom, a mulatto interpreter, the Prefect of Marseilles himself, and a professor from the Jardin des Plantes, while troops kept back the crowd. Thousands came every day to see it, and men and women wore gloves, gowns, and waistcoats of the colour of its spots. But the successful expedition by which, in 1836, M. Thibaut procured a stock of giraffes for the Zoological Society, owed nothing to the patronage of the Pasha of Egypt, beyond permission to enter the Soudan. The caravan left the Nile near Dongola, and thence passed on to the desert of Kordofan. There M. Thibaut engaged the services of the Arab sword-hunters, whose skill and courage were of such service to Sir Samuel Baker in his expedition thirty years later to the sources of the Nile tributaries; and in two days they sighted the giraffes. A female with a fawn was first pursued by the Arabs, who killed the animal with their swords, and next day tracked and caught the fawn in the thorny mimosa scrub. For four days the young giraffe was secured by a cord, the end of which was held by one of the Arabs; at the end of that time it was perfectly tame, and trotted after the caravan with the female camels which had been brought to supply it with milk. The Arabs were excellent nurses, and taught the young creature to drink milk by putting their fingers into its mouth and so inducing it to suck. Four others which M. Thibaut caught died in the cold weather in the desert. But he replaced three of these, and brought four, including that first taken, down the Nile to Alexandria, and then by ship to Malta. “Providence alone,” he wrote, “enabled me to surmount these difficulties.”

The Report of the Council of the Society as to the progress of this great undertaking is worth quoting in full.

“The Council are now (April 1836) looking forward with interest to the completion of an attempt in which the Society is engaged for the importation of several giraffes, which they hope to see added to the Society’s collection in a very few weeks. In the earlier days of the Society’s existence, the acquisition of this singular and rare animal was among the most important objects to which the attention of the Council was directed, and they made many inquiries as to the probable means of effecting it, and then named a price which would be paid for one or two of them, on their being delivered, in good health, at the Society’s Gardens.

“In 1833 the inquiries were again resumed, through Mr. Bourchier of Malta, to whose valuable aid on numerous occasions the Society is almost incessantly indebted. Through his intervention, and the kindness of Colonel Campbell, her Majesty’s Consul-General for Egypt, an arrangement was made during the close of that year with M. Thibaut, who was then at Cairo, and he agreed to proceed to Nubia for the purpose of procuring giraffes on the Society’s behalf. The terms of his agreement imposed upon him the whole risk of the undertaking, previously to the delivery of the animals in Malta, and it was not until his landing them in that island that he was entitled to receive the stipulated price, which was at a fixed rate for each individual, diminishing in proportion to the number he should bring with him.”

After a brief reference to the capture of the animals, the report states that he reached Malta in safety with his valuable charges, three males and a female, on November 21, 1834. “Having thus fulfilled his engagement, M. Thibaut became entitled to receive the stipulated sum of £700, which has accordingly been paid him. But the Council has considered it so desirable to avail themselves of his experience with respect to these valuable animals, that they have arranged with him for the continuation of his services until their arrival in England. For the conveyance of the giraffes to this country, the Council have availed themselves of the _Manchester_, a steam vessel of great size and power, which proceeded to Lisbon at the beginning of the present month, having been specially engaged for the service of Prince Ferdinand of Portugal. From Lisbon the _Manchester_ is to proceed to Malta, whence she will return to London. Her arrival may be expected before the end of May. For the conveyance of the animals to England £1000 will be paid, and the necessary fittings for the accommodation of the giraffes will be prepared at the cost of the Society in her Majesty’s dockyard at Malta, orders to that effect having been sent thither by the Lords of the Admiralty.” Thus the giraffes came to this country under circumstances almost as imposing as those which marked the reception of that sent by the Pasha of Egypt to Paris. They travelled in one of the first steam vessels of the mercantile marine, one which had just conveyed a prince, and their comfort was provided for by the Admiralty and the Royal Dockyards.

All four were safely lodged in the Zoological Gardens on May 24, 1836, an event which the Council of the Society justly claimed as highly creditable to its resources. One died in the following winter, but the rest continued in excellent health, and became the greatest public favourites in the menagerie.

At the time of their arrival the largest was then about 11 ft. high, the height of an adult male being 12 ft. at the shoulder and 18 ft. at the head. For many years, as we have said, the giraffes throve and multiplied. They readily took to European food, and ate hay and fresh grass from the tall racks with which their stables were fitted. _Onions_ and sugar were their favourite delicacies, and in search of sugar they would follow their keeper, and slip their long prehensile tongues into his hands or pockets. But they always retained a liking for eating flowers, a reminiscence, perhaps, of the days when their parents feasted on mimosa blossoms in the desert. Some years ago, one was seen to stretch its neck over the railings, and to delicately nip off an artificial rose in a young lady’s hat. They were most affectionate creatures, and, as M. Thibaut noticed when in charge of them in Upper Egypt, would shed tears if they missed their companions or their usual attendants. But the development of the lachrymal ducts, which enables the giraffe to express its emotions in this very human fashion, is less obvious than the wonderful size and beauty of the eyes themselves, which are far larger than those of any other quadruped. On May 27, 1840, four years after their arrival, the female giraffe bore and afterwards reared a fine fawn, and it was not until they had been eleven years in the menagerie that the death occurred of one of the pair of males which had survived the first year in England. In 1849 two more males and one female giraffe were waiting the Society’s pleasure at Cairo, and the stock continued to increase by births in the menagerie. In 1867 the straw in the giraffes’ house caught fire at night, and a female and her fawn were suffocated. A sum of £545 was claimed as compensation for their loss, and duly paid to the Society by the “Sun” Fire Insurance Office, probably the first claim of the kind paid in Europe. For curiosity, now that we have no living giraffe left in England, we would suggest a comparison of the beautifully-stuffed giraffe heads in Mr. Rowland Ward’s collection in Piccadilly, with the innumerable specimens of other large game, such as wapiti, buffaloes, hippopotami, or rhinoceros, which fill the rooms. In all these, the size and character of the eye has been carefully reproduced, though no art could preserve the lustre and softness of the eye of the giraffe in life. While the Mahdi’s power remains unbroken at Khartoum, there is little probability that the Soudan traders will be able to supply any to occupy the empty house in Regent’s Park. Yet the southern range of these beautiful creatures, though it has greatly receded, still extends to the North Kalahari Desert, and to part of Khama’s country, where the “camel-thorn,” as the Boers call the giraffe-acacia, abounds. There the great chief carefully preserves the giraffes, and allows only his own people, or his own white friends, to kill them. The other point at which the giraffe country is still accessible to European hunters or naturalists is Somaliland, and the “unknown horn” of Africa. This district is so far accessible, that parties of English sportsmen yearly penetrate it from Berbera, making Aden their starting-point from British territory. But from the point of view of those who would delay as long as possible the extermination of the large game of Africa, the Dervish empire is not altogether matter for regret. No doubt the Arabs will still kill giraffes to make their shields from the hides, as they have done for centuries; but for the present the Soudan giraffes will be protected from raids like that in which those in the Kalahari Desert were destroyed in hundreds, because the price of “sjambok whips” had doubled. The Mahdi is, in fact, the involuntary protector of the wild animals of Central Africa, to which Sir Samuel Baker bore unconscious testimony when he lamented that, “owing to British interference in Egypt, where the ‘courbatch’ (hippopotamus whip) has been abolished, the hippopotamus will remain undisturbed on the great White Nile, monarch of the river upon which fifteen British steamers were flying when the Soudan was abandoned by the despotic order of Great Britain, and handed back to savagedom and wild beasts.”

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THE ELECTRIC EEL.

IF the rational basis of legend and fable is worth exploring at all, we may well ask why the possession of electric power, the most strange, and until recently the most inexplicable, attribute of any of the inhabitants of the water, does not play a greater part in the marvellous narratives of ancient voyages? The _remora_, or sucking-fish, magnified a thousand times in imaginations excited by a world of strange and new experience, was the besetting foe of mariners in Northern waters. Clinging to the keel, it kept their barques for weeks in the _mare pigrum_, the sluggish sea of drifting ice. Whales, rising like sandbanks above the waves, tempted the weary crews to make fast to their treacherous bulk, and then plunged to the bottom, carrying with them both ships and sailors. Gigantic squids thrust their slimy arms down the hatchways, and plucked sleeping seamen from their berths and strangled them before their comrades’ eyes. But the “torpedo”—the paralyzer—though as well known then to the fishers of the Mediterranean as it is now known, under the name of the “crampfish,” or electric ray, to the trawlers of Cornwall or the Channel, seems to have appealed less to the fancies of the sailors of old, than the new though less mysterious powers of the monsters, great and small, which rushed beneath their keels in hyperborean seas. Possibly the powers of the “torpedo” were too well known to excite curiosity, though it is difficult to believe that a creature which sometimes reaches a bulk of 100 lbs. weight, and can emit an electrical discharge strong enough to kill a duck, or to cause in the human arm a “creeping sensation felt in the whole limb up to the shoulder, accompanied by a violent trembling, and sharp pain in the elbow,” followed by loss of sensation for an hour, was not as suggestive to sailors’ fancies as the tentacles of the cuttle-fish, or the sucking-discs of the _remora_. But if the fabulous terrors of the last were enough to deter the boldest mariners who sailed beyond Thule, it is matter for congratulation that early explorers were unacquainted with the powers and proportions of a monster of still more formidable mould, the electric eel of Southern America. Its mere aspect is lurid, sombre, and repulsive. Its belly glows like red-hot iron, as if fresh from the lake of living fire. Its back is dark and shiny, as if tinged by inky Cocytus. Around its lips and jaws are glowing spots like bubbles of hot metal. The colours meet in a line along the side; and the creature, when drawn from the water, looks as though formed of two welded portions of iron, the one hot, the other cold, just plunged into the blacksmith’s cistern. Small eyes, blue and bleared, are set in the top of a blunt ferocious head, from which the strong and muscular body tapers gradually to a point at the tail. Such, at least, is the appearance of the two electric eels at the Zoo, of whose power the writer, with curiosity stimulated by Baron Humboldt’s unique description of these creatures in the inland pools of tropical America, recently made trial. Neither the size of the fish, nor their physical condition in the small tank in which they exist at present, could reasonably be expected to produce such results as the great traveller witnessed in the stagnant pools of the llanos of Caraccas, when the Indians drove a herd of horses into the water to face the electric discharges of the fish. “These yellowish livid eels,” he writes, “resembling large aquatic snakes, swim near the surface of the water, and crowd under the bellies of the horses and mules. The struggle between animals of so different an organization affords a very interesting sight. The Indians, armed with harpoons and long slender reeds, closely surround the pool, and by their wild shouts and long reeds prevent the horses from coming to the bank. The eels seek to defend themselves by repeated discharges of their electric batteries, and for a long time it seems as if theirs would be the victory. Several horses sink under the violence of the invisible blows which they receive in the most vital parts, and, benumbed by the force and frequency of the shocks, disappear beneath the surface. Others, with mane erect and haggard eyes, raise themselves and endeavour to escape, but are driven back by the Indians. Within five minutes a couple of horses are killed. The eel, which is five feet long, presses its body against the belly of the horse, and attacks at once the heart, the viscera, and the group of abdominal nerves. It is natural,” the author adds, “that the effect which a horse experiences should be more powerful than that produced by the same fish on man, when it touches him only at one of the extremities. The horses are probably not killed, but stunned, and are drowned amid the confusion of the struggle between the other horses and eels.”

The truth of Humboldt’s account of the taking of the electric eels is sometimes doubted. But apart from the credit due to the deliberate utterances of one of the greatest minds of modern days, the accuracy of whose views, even when he put them forward as mere probable surmise, is being constantly verified by later experience, the powers of the creatures, even of the small specimen brought to this country, are so astonishing as to make Humboldt’s account not err on the side of the marvellous.

It would be difficult, unless the opportunity existed of taking a plunge into a tank large enough to swim in, and well stocked with electric eels, to realize by personal experience the precise effect of the shocks upon the horses; but a record of the writer’s sensations when in personal contact with these uncanny creatures may perhaps give some notion of the strength of their electric power. The largest of the pair in Regent’s Park, about 4½ ft. in length, thick and deep, and probably weighing from 16 lbs. to 18 lbs., was moving sluggishly on the bottom of the tank, and was slowly raised to the surface by a landing-net. As its side became visible, its resemblance to a “cooling cast” was even closer than when seen from above. When grasped in the middle of the back, there was just time to realize that it had none of the “lubricity” of the common eel, when the first shock passed up the arm with a “flicker” identical with that which a zig-zag flash of lightning leaves upon the eye, and, as it seemed, with equal speed. A second and third felt like a blow on the “funny-bone,” and the hand and arm were involuntarily thrown back with a jerk which flung the water backwards on the pavement and over the keeper who was kindly assisting in the enterprise. This slight mishap recalled a far less agreeable result of a shock inflicted on a previous inquirer, whose recoiling hand had struck the assistant a severe blow in the face. Unwilling to be baffled by a fish less in size than the salmon which form the common stock of a fishmonger’s window, the writer once more endeavoured to hold the eel at any cost of personal suffering. But the electric powers were too subtle and pervading to be denied. The first muscular quiver of the fish was resisted; but at the second, the sense of vibration set up became intolerable, and the enforced release was as rapid and uncontrollable as the first. The smaller eel was neither so vigorous nor so resentful as its fellow. But though the first and second shocks did not compel the grasp to relax, a third was equally intolerable with that given by the larger fish. The electrical power seems to increase rapidly in the heavier eels. One of 5 ft. in length, which appeared to be nearly dead when it arrived at the Gardens, and was therefore handled without ceremony, inflicted a shock which, as the keeper stated, “nearly sent him on his back;” and the same fish, when being carried by hand in a tub up to the rooms of the Royal Society, sent a shock through the water which nearly caused the downfall of fish and bucket alike. This power of projecting its electric discharge, either through the water or by means of any conductor, to the object which it desires to paralyze, may be well observed at the Zoo. The usual way in which the shocks are received is by grasping a copper-rod, which is placed in contact with the fish’s back. But it is when in pursuit of the small fish which form its food that the “range” of the eel’s battery is best seen. On the last occasion on which the writer was present at the eel’s feeding-hour, eight or ten lively gudgeon were taken from a pail, and placed in the eel’s tank. The small fish at once dived to the bottom, as is their habit, and sought refuge in the corners, or at the angle made by the meeting of the base and sides of the stone cistern. Every one of the fish was killed by electric shock before being eaten; but in the case of those in the corners, it was impossible for the fish to bring the electric organ, which lies on each side of the lower part of the tail, into direct contact. The eel, therefore, swam past them, like a torpedo-boat which intends to discharge its broadside torpedoes, and as the battery came opposite, the fish gave a slight quiver, which instantaneously produced a violent shock in the gudgeon, and turned it belly upwards. After three had been killed and eaten, the shocks became weaker, and the other gudgeon seemed only partly paralyzed by the first shock, and sometimes recovered and swam away in a crippled condition until benumbed by a second shock. One fish which was “shocked” and left for dead while the eel went in pursuit of more, recovered after a few minutes, and was subsequently pursued, received a direct shock from the eel’s side, and was killed. The inference suggested by the writer’s own experience of the violence of the shocks inflicted, though with different degrees of intensity, is that the eel controls the power of the electrical discharge at will, just as it controls any other function which has its initiative in muscular action; and that the gudgeons received enough, and no more, than was sufficient to paralyze them, and make them easy victims for the slow-moving eel.

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DEEP-SEA LAMPS.

THE possibility of exhibiting the powers of electrical fishes in the tanks at the Zoo, suggests the question whether, in the progress of marine aquariums, we shall ever see the luminous creatures of the deep seas exhibited alive before air-breathing mortals in this upper world. Virgil’s Sybil set the depth of Tartarus at twice the skyward gaze to the summit of Olympus. But the profundity of the ocean abyss is such that in the deep Atlantic Olympus might be imposed upon itself, and Ossa piled above, without rising to break the surface. The imagination almost refuses to grasp the physical conditions in an abyss so profound as the ocean bed off the coast of Porto Rico, wrapped, by a weight of waters five miles deep, in perpetual darkness and everlasting cold, and under a pressure of which figures can convey no practical conception. Even at the average depth of 2,500 fathoms sunlight can never penetrate. The temperature is only a few degrees above freezing-point, the water is without movement, there is no plant-life, and the pressure is two and a half tons on the square inch, or about twenty-five times greater than that which drives a railway train. 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. 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 results of recent deep-sea exploration have been summarized by Mr. Sydney J. Hickson, Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, in a short work on _The Fauna of the Deep Sea_, published in the “Modern Science Series.”[1] Though the bulk and specialized character of the reports of separate expeditions organized by the English, French, German, Italian, and Norwegian governments, makes such a task one of no ordinary difficulty, Mr. Hickson has succeeded in his wish to “give in a small compass the more important facts of this great mass of literature in such a form as may interest those who do not possess a specialist’s knowledge.” The main conclusions are clearly presented with examples and excellent illustrations, in number sufficient to convince without bewildering. On one point we could desire a little more information. There is no suggestion of the means by which creatures differing so little in bodily frame and tissue from the shallow-water species, from which they are apparently derived by migration into the deeps, support the enormous pressure in their present home. Some explanation seems to be required, though an incident in the recent erection of the Forth Bridge seems to suggest that the modification of tissue to endure high pressure may be acquired more rapidly than is supposed. The men employed in the steel shells or caissons sunk to form the foundations of the piers, worked in a pressure of air rather greater than the pressure of the water outside, which would otherwise have penetrated between the rims of the caissons and the ground. On those days on which they were not employed, and came to the surface, they felt such pain in the joints from the expansion of the air, which had been absorbed at high pressure, that they begged to be allowed to go down into the caissons and spend their off hours in the pressure to which they had grown accustomed. This instance of partial migration into conditions of high pressure, seems worthy of a place among the facts of deep-sea exploration. Yet it must remain among the strangest features of life in the ocean abyss, that its inhabitants show so little visible change of structure to meet what seems the first and most overwhelming change of physical conditions. The angler-fish and eels, crabs and prawns, star-fish and zoophytes of the shallow waters are represented in the abyss by forms almost similar in structure, though that some difference must exist is shown by the fact that when brought up by the dredge from the depths of the ocean they are killed and distorted by the diminution and disappearance of the vast pressure in which they habitually live. “The fish which live at these enormous depths,” writes Mr. Hickson, “are liable to a curious form of accident. If, in chasing their prey, or for any other reason, they rise to a considerable distance above the floor of the ocean, the gases of their swimming-bladder become greatly expanded, and their specific gravity reduced. If the muscles are not strong enough to drive the body downwards, the fish, becoming more and more distended as it goes, is gradually killed on its long and involuntary journey to the surface of the sea. The deep-sea fish, then, are exposed to a danger that no other animals in this world are subject to—namely, that of tumbling upwards.”

Footnote 1:

_The Fauna of the Deep Sea_, by Sydney J. Hickson, M.A., D.Sc. London:
Kegan Paul and Co.

But however obscure the structure which enables the deep-sea creatures to withstand the pressure of the waters, the means by which they combat the plague of darkness is evident and astounding. It is well known that the number of phosphorescent animals, even in shallow tropical seas, is such that they can illuminate not only the waters, but the air, to a considerable distance. Sir Wyville Thompson states, that near the Cape Verde Islands he saw the sea in such a blaze of phosphorescence that, though there was no moon, “it was easy to read the smallest print, sitting at the after-port in the cabin; while the bows shed, on either side, rapidly widening wedges of radiance, so vivid as to throw the sails and riggings into distinct lights and shadows.” 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. These are supplemented by other sets of less clearly divided light-organs, arranged in clusters and groups of fifty or a hundred. Other deep-sea fishes have bull’s-eye lanterns set beneath their eyes, projecting their light “full-a-head.” Sections cut through these extraordinary organs show that above the phosphorus-burning vessel lies first a layer of “reflectors,” and lastly, a lens for concentrating the beams. Perhaps the strangest development of this power of illumination is in an angler-fish, found at a depth of 14,700 feet. Like the other “anglers,” it has a huge mouth armed with long uneven teeth, and a pendent “fishing-rod” tentacle which attracts other fish like a bait. In the shallow-water “anglers” this tentacle resembles something edible by fish. In the deep-water species it is fitted with an organ which is supposed to be a phosphorus lamp, and to play the part of a “Will-o’-the-Wisp” in attracting little fishes to the angler’s jaws.

The phosphorescent power is by no means confined to the fishes proper of the deep sea. Starfish and most of the various forms of zoophytes possess it, though in less perfect organs. One poured out “clouds of a pale-blue, highly luminous substance, which not only illuminated the observer’s hands and surrounding objects in the vessel in which it was confined, but finally communicated a luminosity to the water itself;” another threw out light of a brilliant green, coruscating from the centre, now along one arm, now along another. In view of the phosphorescence even of the surface of the sea when full of luminous creatures, it is not rash to conclude that the eternal night of the abyss is in places lighted with sufficient brilliance by its phosphorescent zoophytes and fishes. Where these are few or absent, there must be darkness either partial or complete. Hence we are presented with the perfectly reconcilable contradiction of deep-sea creatures with eyes of high development, and others with no eyes at all; one species possessing eyes with four thousand facets, while crabs and prawns are found totally blind, like the fish of subterranean caverns. Those which carry lamps themselves, or live among luminous creatures, not only retain their eyes, but are supplied with organs of abnormal power in order to use to the utmost the phosphorous beams. The presence of bright colouring in the deep-sea forms is also explained in the same way, so far as colour is related to the presence of light. There is little difference in the hues of deep-sea and shallow-water species, except that shades of red are more frequent in the former, possibly because red is the complementary colour of the phosphorescent beams.

It is in the leading facts which make such minor developments possible that the wonder and significance of these discoveries lie,—in the defiance of such physical obstacles as are set to life by enormous pressure, and in the artificial lighting of the abysmal darkness by the invading creatures. Sir Richard Owen once suggested an extension of the limits of terrestrial life, by pointing out that the light of the planet Jupiter was suited to the form of the vertebrate eye. When the mind which has once grasped the physical conditions of the ocean abyss, is confronted with the triumph of living creatures over such surroundings, it no longer lies with it to reject as impossible the surmise that life, which so transcends the limits set by ordinary experience to its scope on earth, may also extend to the planets.

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THE LION HOUSE AT THE ZOO.

[“_Hic habitat leones._”—Old Map of Central Africa.]

JUST fifty years ago, when the best means of keeping wild animals in health and vigour when confined was still matter for experiment, an interesting set of statistics of the length of life of the large _felidæ_ in the Gardens was submitted to the Society by Mr. Rees. It appeared from the records of the menagerie that lions, leopards, tigers, and pumas only lived, on an average, for two years in the Gardens, which gave a rate of mortality of about one per month. The value of lions and tigers was then about £150 each, and of leopards and pumas £15.

The system which led to this great mortality was one of confinement in small stuffy cages, in a room artificially heated throughout the year, and much was hoped from a complete change of treatment which had just begun.

PUMAS. From a photograph by Gambier Bolton.
]

The new principle was one of “free exposure to the outer air, with no artificial heat whatever,” and the range of dens now known as the “Terrace,” on either side of which the bears are kept, was built for the accommodation of the lions and tigers. The cages do not strike us as particularly roomy or comfortable now, but at that time they were looked upon as unusually spacious, and the unfortunate carnivora, which had been boxed up in stuffy rooms and narrow cages, soon felt the benefit of the change. The African leopards, which were emaciated and sickly before their removal, became plump and sleek in a fortnight, and the appetite of all materially increased. The most convincing proof of this gratifying change was that a tigress, feeling hungry in the night, killed a tiger, and a puma did the same, and partly devoured its mate. The Society took the hint, and increased their rations, and for some time the new method of lion-culture answered well.

The rough-and-ready expedient of exposing the great cats to all the changes of an English climate had a greater measure of success than might have been expected. One is apt to forget that though the tropics are the main home of the tiger and the leopard, both wander far into the northern mountains, and that the former, if brought originally from Turkestan or China, can stand an English winter as well as the Chinese monkeys. During the year after the removal of the animals to their new house there was not a single death, and the system promised so well that artificial heat was for a time discontinued, both in the Monkey House and the Giraffe House, except that given by open fires. That the health of all the animals improved is shown by the list of creatures which lived in the Gardens, including brown and black bears, leopards, and ocelots.

The present Lion House, with its fine outdoor summer palaces, and its indoor winter cages, in a house warmed with hot water, is a combination of the two previous systems, and so far as health goes it seems to leave nothing to be desired. 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; but Mr. Hagenbeck says, that provided the animals are associated when quite young, and that each addition to the family is a young one, there is no danger. Meantime the space and freedom of the great cages, and the absence of that _ennui_ to which animals are subject when confined separately, or even in pairs, have the best effect on their growth and vivacity. In the Hamburg cage the polar bear will play and romp with the tigers for hours, and most wonderful exhibitions of strength may be seen daily in these wrestling matches between such gigantic and dissimilar creatures.

Mr. Hagenbeck is the Moltke of the wild animal trade. His menagerie at Chicago attracted more visitors even than the “gigantic wheel,” mainly because the creatures had more liberty and more space than they enjoy in any other “gardens”; and it is probable that he will effect a marked change in the modes of animal exhibitions now in use.

Meantime, whether in summer or winter, the Lion House is perhaps better worth seeing than any branch of the Society’s menagerie.

Few public characters are “at home” to visitors during so many hours of the day as its inmates; who might with justice enter a protest against the incivility of the public, which insists on taking the notice that “The lions will be fed at three o’clock,” as a pressing invitation to be spectators of their manners at mealtimes. 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. In the morning, in the Lion House, all is quiet. The animals are resting or sleeping, and the only visitors are artists or photographers, whom the lions “oblige” with a sitting at a cheaper rate than any professional models in the trade. We wonder in how many characters the old Nubian lion, “Prince,” appeared? He has striven with Hercules, carried Una, been vanquished by Samson, and shot by Nimrod. He has roared at Daniel, and eaten martyrs innumerable; and he still lives on canvas to entertain Androcles in his den, or dies, the last of his race, in the desert cavern of some artist’s fancy.