savage with his contracted brow, and the Indian
with his vile cunning and mean beggary, are near
enough to these monkeys to have satisfied Lord
Monboddo himself, and the Zoological Society,
as if to prove this, and, besides, to make their
collection complete, have got attached to the
service of young Prince or Princess
Hippopotamus a “native,” who seems, from a casual
glance, to have all the qualities of the ape in
good development. He holds out his paw with
grinning cries for halfpence to those who visit
this department, and to ladies especially, grinning
and staring at them in a way that very offensively
carries out the resemblance that has been
hinted above. Perhaps the members of this
otherwise admirably conducted society are not
aware of the proceedings of this one of their
servants, and that a word of warning is very much
required to prevent this swarthy gentleman from
annoying the visitors to the gardens.

In commenting upon the manners of this
apparently near relation of our poor relations the
monkeys, we have insensibly got through to the
other side of the tunnel, and we may as well, for
the present, stop there; for it is the very essence
of sight-seeing to set at nought the classification
of guide-books, to take amusement, and instruction
too, as it suggests itself, and to wander as
one feels inclined from pillar to post, from the
contemplation of a sea-anemone to that of a
giraffe, and from the rat of the Thames to the
hippopotamus of the Nile.

What length of acquaintance—what amount
of familiarity ever diminishes our surprise at the
giraffe? Is there some mechanical teaching in
its structure that has never been yet discovered?
We have found out the use of the elephant; can
nothing be done with the giraffe, the largest and
apparently the meekest of animals?

Blessings on the whole deer tribe—they are
well represented here—with their great, soft,
harmless eyes and their wet and wholesome
noses. Sweet-breathed, tame, and beautiful,
they thrust their faces through the wooden
bars and perfume the hand they touch. They
are even more innocent than the rabbits that
live near the superintendent's office. Your
Eye-witness found a group of these last little
animals who were sitting all over and upon
one of their number, and were eating their
meal off his very back. There was something
about this that irresistibly suggested the practice
of the world when it meets to discuss the
affairs of a brother who has failed, or to chatter
over a death, in both which cases the friends or
executors will assemble thus in not displeased
convocation, and will lunch freely over the body
or the bankrupt, as the case may be. What had
that rabbit done to render himself subject to
that discussion of his affairs in his presence?
Had he become surety for a necessitous friend,
had he made a love-match, or what had he done,
to be lunched over in this ignominious fashion?

These parrots, though a noisy race, so noisy,
in fact, that it is impossible to spend many
minutes in their society, are yet a jovial set.
It is very difficult to know where to have a
parrot, still more a cockatoo. He will entwine
himself about his perch, keeping his eye upon
you, and making overtures of peace; he will
lean upon his beak and push himself along with
all his weight upon it, as if it were a skate; and
presently he will turn upside down and eye you
from beneath his perch, holding on by his grey
and wrinkled claws. Emboldened by these
little attentions, of which you are evidently the
object, and encouraged to fraternise with him
by these concessions on his part, you advance
a hand to caress him. In one instant—in
less—the lowly, courteous, wheedling creature
starts into a great white crest embodiment of
rage, and screeches a yell of hatred into your
very throat, performing volleys of indignant
curtseyings the while, and revealing the dry
interior of its grey mouth, with a hideous grey
hammer inside it, which represents his tongue.
They are wicked, crawling, topsy-turvy sinners
these parrots, and never to be trusted or dealt
with as friends. They are humbugs, too, and
do not, as is the case with the three ravens who
live outside, proclaim openly that they are
demons of the wickedest order.

There is no disguise about a raven, who
openly avows his disrelish for virtue, to such an
extent that he does not even care for his food till
he has scented it, buried it, made it appear a
furtive act to get at it, and persuaded himself
that he has stolen it. The three ravens who
live behind the parrot-house are a dissipated
trio, and will with every added year of life gain
in that disreputableness of appearance which is
one of their greatest sources of attraction.

It is strange that any one should have doubts
about the reliableness of physiognomy as a
science, after a visit to the Zoological Gardens.
What creature is there in the whole collection
that does not proclaim his character at a glance,
and that is not helpless against the revelations
of his own exterior? Consider the mischief
that is suggested by the appearance of a raven
or a magpie, the insatiate desire for prey of the
eagle, the debased malignity and cunning of
the monkey. Look again at the horror that
lurks in every fold of the rattlesnake or the
puff-adder. It is absolutely terrible to stoop
down near the glass and face one of these
reptiles. How still it keeps, with its erect head,
its fixed eyes—its forked tongue, only, slipping
in and out, in thirst for life. How horrible the
identity of colour with the sand and earth on
which it lies!

But if the more malignant and dangerous
among animals are marked as being so by the
external indications of their conformation and
expression, it is equally certain that the soft
eyes of the antelope tell a tale of equal truth,
and that the low moaning of the dove, though
appealing to a different sense, conveys to the
ear an assurance of peace which the nature
of the bird itself bears fully out. It is not
wonderful that in man, possessed as he is of
that subtle organism, a face, we should be able
to read character, but that this should be
the case with animals with only the rudiments