MR. CORNISH'S "LIFE AT THE ZOO."
lifosT of the forty chapters of Life at the Zoo have already appeared in these columns, but they have been enlarged, and form, with the unpublished chapters, a comprehensive survey of the moat famous menagerie of modern times. We say famous, because even those who can appreciate the immense variety of animal types collected together, and the delight to the senses of a keen observer that is afforded by the habits of so ninny rare and beautiful creatures, fail to realise what a great and successful struggle against circumstances is the establishment of a menagerie in London. The greater part of the animals are more or less unfitted for life in the temperate zone, and were certainly never constituted to stand the English climate with its exe- crable winter weather and the London fogs, the last and worst product of civilisation. Yet they live; and if health and condition and amiability are indications of happiness, they are happy too. It is comforting to think that the more enlightened and the further removed from the brute creation we become, so much the more do we seem able to sender brute-life happy, and abate the hostility and cruelty that separate the beings of a higher from those of a lower organisation. We almost envy Mr. Cornish the endless
* Lire at the Zoo : Notes and Traditions of tke Repant's Park Gardens. By 1. With Illattratioas after Photographs by ambler Bolton, F Z.S. Loudon: Ste'ey and Co. pleasure that the rambles in the Zoo must have afforded to a sportsman and a naturalist of keenly observant eye. To see animals in captivity, uncared for, unhealthy, and unhappy, is positive pain, but to see them happy gives us so much pleasure that we might be excused for forgetting that they are no longer free.
The most popular inmates at the Zoo are probably the great carnivore, or perhaps the monkeys ; and no doubt the lion and the tiger have a grandeur of mien and a brute- strength that is more truly impressive than exquisite beauty and wonderful adaptation to circumstances. Yet to us the motion of the divers in the water is even more wonderful than the weight of the tiger's paw. The idea of flying in water seems to a reasonable human being absurd, and that the wing of a bird should be of any use to it in a medium so dense as water, we should expect to hear from Baron Munchausen. Yet the black-footed penguin which cannot fly, cannot walk, and cannot even swim, is capable of a submarine flight so rapid that it overtakes fish with the utmost ease. That a clumsy-looking creature, ostensibly a bird, should be able to surpass a fish, a creature built on such exquisite lines and with such perfect adaptation to motion, in its own element, may well cause us astonish- ment. The submarine flight of the penguin, its plumage beaded with silvery babbles of air, turning and wheeling with the ease of a swift, is surely wonderful, more wonderful than "the way of an eagle in the air." The puffin, the nearest English relation to the penguin, can fly in both air and water, being indeed a migrant from the Mediterranean. The guillemot can both fly in the water and float on it, and its aerial flight is well known ; moreover, its appearance under water is as beautiful as that of the penguin, so that, as Mr.
Cornish says, it ranks first as an all-round performer. The true diving birds, such as the cormorant and darter and diver, use their feet. The cormorant is a greedy bird as well as a great diver, so that, we are told, he has been taken in a crab-pot set at a depth of twenty fathoms.
The Lion House is the best known feature of the Zoo, and beyond pointing out the success that has followed the inno- vation of open-air runs, and the bringing together of several individuals, Mr. Cornish has but little to add to the general knowledge. At Hamburg, lions, tigers, leopards, and hears live harmoniously together, and the polar-bear romps with the Bengal tigers for hours together without troubling itself about the incongruity of living with a beast it ought to have no idea of. Doubtless, it has some faint notion of this contrast, and a very real knowledge of its own strength that restrains its surliness. For the polar-bear, as Mr. Cornish reminds us, is the largest of the carnivora ; and the old bear in the Zoo, he thinks, mast weigh nearly a ton. Alas I it has died since the publication of this book, having lived upwards of twenty-six years in its London home. Its predecessor had lived thirty-four years. Our author says :— "When we recollect that its common prey is the walrus, a sea- beast nearly as large as a rhinoceros, seldom moving far from the edge of the ice-floes, and able by mere weight to drag both itself and its enemy into the sea, and to fight for life in its native element, the strength and armament of teeth awl claws necessary to destroy it must be greater even than those of the lion, which, with all its weight of bone and muscle, seldom attacks even so large an animal as the buffalo unless crippled by wounds."
Indeed, the great cats are not always successful in over- powering their prey; and the grizzly has before now met his match in the American bison, as the hunters and " old- timers " of the Rockies will tell us. A Polar bear was seen by an Arctic explorer swimming in the open sea with no land nearer than twenty miles. Its strength, size, and longevity indicate the perfection of its constitution and its adaptation to circumstances, as the size and longevity of the elephant also proclaim a similar vigour and an even more admirable organisation. There is a charming description by our author, on "London Bears," of the playfulness and delight in life of the female polar-bear at the Zoo. We have spoken of the elephant, and on turning to "Elephant Life in England," find some interesting remarks on the great pachyderms that Londoners perhaps remember best of all. The departure of Jumbo' so roused the sentiment of Londoners, that the gate-money rose by thousands of pounds let one year.
Very entertaining is the account of an elephant's wanderings ia Highbury, and the discomfiture inflicted by it on an enraged fishmonger. Mr. (lornieh renainis us of the elephant which belonged to the Liverpool Zoo, and was shot by thirty soldiers ; and there are still alive those who remember the celebrated Ohuny,' of the Royal Exchange, and the commotion caused by his outbreak and military exe- cution. A race of men now exists that, profiting by hereditary teaching, is capable of managing this magnificent animal, and thus we may hope, with Mr. Cornish, that the duration of ele- phant life may exceed the present average of fifty years, though for reasons of climate, we cannot approach the eighty years of the captive elephants in India. This exceeds even human longevity ; yet there can be no doubt that the natural span of elephant life is twice this figure. A wonderful beast, truly, when we consider his intelligence—they work in the Indian Government yards, hauling timber, ceasing and re- suming work at a given signal—and from his bulk, sagacity, and longevity, the most impressive animal known to man. The tortoise surpasses the elephant in the last respect ; but then the tortoise can hardly be said to live—it merely passes the time—and it is not an animal which arouses passionate enthusiasm ; it is an archaic, survival singularly out of place in these fin, de saga days. Mr. Cornish is reticent on the subject of tortoises, naturally enough ; still the animal exists, has its place in the cycle of life, and is known—a modest, unobtrusive figure—in the background of many an English garden.
The chapter on wild-cats will be interesting to those who would derive the familiar household pet from one or other of the many types at the Zoo. This, however, cannot be done with any certainty, though the Scotch wild-oat and its relative, the jungle-cat, or "dims," show strong affinities to it. The wild-cats and the tiger-cats resemble the domestic cat in never exercising itself like those greater cats, tigers and leopards, whose restless pacing to and fro has become a proverb. The wild-eats are an interesting and brilliant assemblage, though some notable species are missing. Mr. Cornish draws especial attention to the beauty of their fur and its colouring,—the ocelot in particular excites his admiration ; he can compare to it nothing but the Argus pheasant in the markings of the peculiar " eye " or "cup and ball" ornament.
The London fogs are very fatal to the monkeys, which are, without exception, the most delicate of all the creatures in the Zoo. Last year, being free from fog, was not fatal to the more delicate monkeys ; the preceding year, we are told, killed sixty. It seems, indeed, almost useless cruelty to bring Brazilian and Guianese monkeys to England. The rarest and most beautiful are unseen by the visitors to the Zoo, being literally "confined to their bedrooms," till death relieves them of a miserable existence. Though these unwilling migrants have the best fur, and the most beautiful colouring and shape, and the most refined limbs, there are many hardier monkeys equally interesting, as the macaques, the capuchins, and the scarcely less delicate marmosets, though the public probably appreciate the larger and more vigorous types, as the chimpanzee and the ourang-outang, with their almost human gestures.
On the subject of animal testheties Mr. Cornish had some experiments made with certain musical instruments and certain scents; and the results could be briefly summed up by saying that the animals behaved much like their lord and master does. The violin was the most entrancing, the flute the most soothing, and the piccolo the most exciting and irri- tating. Deer, tigers, and monkeys enjoyed the violin, and when disturbed by the piccolo were calmed by the flute. The flute, as the most natural, and, of course, incomparably the most ancient, instrument, we should suppose to be that most agreeable to the majority of animals, and an extended series of experiments would doubtless prove this. The monkeys were variously affected by the violin, the intelligent capuchins showing much critical appreciation, as also did the macaques ; on the whole, it was the favourite. The ourang-outang was so pleased at the " bagpipes " on the violin, that it turned somersaults and threw straw over its head. Happy monkey! No animal, perhaps, is more sensitive to music than the horse, and one kind of music—" the cry of the hounds "—will reduce a stabled horse, miles away, to an almost pitiable state of excitement. The scent experimented with was lavender-water, and the various members of the greater and lesser cat families manifested a great fondness for it, as they also did for other delicate flower scents.
"The Animal Sense of Beauty" is a chapter that ought to set some of our naturalists studying likely evidence of the taste of birds for colour. The bower-birds, of course, occupy the first place as lovers of the beautiful. The crow tribe, as Mr. Cornish declares, make a distinction between collections of food and collections of bric.h.brac. As an instance of decoration he describes a chiff-chaff's nest adorned with feathers of the kingfisher. We have seen a sparrow's nest with a single peacock's breast-feather, which must have been carried from a distance, stuck on the outside. A striking instance of the effect produced by the gorgeous colouring of the peacock occurs to us which may be worth quoting. Some fine white turkeys were in the habit of spreading their tails and proudly revolving whenever they passed our window. this day the peacock sauntered up in the middle of the vain dispiav ; standing still, he slowly expanded his incomparable tail, The effect was ridiculously sudden ; the humiliated turkeys collapsed and slunk away, while the peacock took a series of stately steps after the retreating birds. Mr. Cornish, in a chapter on "Patterns," notices that certain patterns appear on the most diverse creatures, and also remarks on the very few patterns that exist. Certain tribes of birds, as the crow and the thrush, preserve peculiar markings through every species, but that the same pattern should be found on a duck, a pheasant, a finch, the larva of a hawk-moth, and on a shell is somewhat remarkable.
There are many fascinating chapters in Mr. Cornish's book that we are unable to more than mention,—a description of Mr. Corbin's great preserve in New Hampshire, some notes on the Paris Zoo in the sieges, and a visit to "Jamrach's," all more or less connected with the Zoological Gardens, and the supply of wild creatures. A more companionable book than Life at the Zoo, for a visitor to the great menagerie,. we cannot imagine. Animal life is viewed from every possible standpoint, and people of the most diverse tastes will find something new, something interesting about the appearance and the habits of animals, and the relation they bear to each other. Some of the chapters are almost too short and slight, for which, of course, their original shape is to blame, but one and all are interesting, thoughtful, and teeming with acute and often minute observation, and the sympathy of a true naturalist. As to the illustrations, Mr. Gambier Bolton's photographs are worthy of their setting; indeed, that of the "hawk-eagle" reproduces the bloom on the feathers with undeniable success.
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