A1G-Z21GS AT THE Z00. I

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the official guide-book, for a guide-book which 1s sober and official can sayv no other.

But scrape close acquaintance with those creatures and talk to their keepers, and N 3 : P ) , . P e Y e ;

you shall find them Bill, Polly, and Sam @ Bill, perhaps, being an casy-

going Lion (or seal or monkey), with a weakness for a lump of sugar, and a disregard of the state of his

bl coat ; Polly a coquette, with a vast pride in

e her tail ; and Sam a touchy old tellow who

objects to all but one particular

7 7,\[///.0 keeper ; and each with a history., (il

Among these distinguished per- sonages shall we zig-zag, and Improve acquaintance. Meantime, let us sit upon this scat on the terrace with a cood view of the gardens before us, while the big vood-humoured Jung Perchad stalks along Delow with a how- dahtul of children and an eve

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N Lo the casual bun ; and let us SO ~ 25t meditate.

[ hke to conduct my brown studics in an atmos- phere of mingled evolution and metempsychosis, Tt 1= a pity that the theory of our cvolution from the primordial proto- plasmman inclusive | line through SeNEEes EVeTY living species should now be con- sidered old-fashioned. I like to imagine that among my remote ancestors cvery living thing is represented—it gives them a family interest. And af, further, I can persuade myself that /7 have been everything, at one time or another, from a blucbottle to a oiraffe—why, then I can brown-study forever. The imagina- tive mind can compass all things. Well may I remember the comtort of a mouth six feet by measurement along the lips, ina crocodile. You take m your encmy in one large generous smile, and he 1s seen no more. And a tail for others—the cow, the dog, the horse, the lon, the tiger—is a convenience, both as a fly-whisk and as a help to workimg up a tantrum. In evolution from a blucbottle to a oiraffe one learns the valuc of these things. As a bluebottle, T think [ should have enjoyed life—as 4 young one certainly an elderly bluebottle gets bloated, slow, o and gouty, losing his sense of o humour. He grows infirm of pur- et pose, too, and forgets to return to the same spot on a bald head after the cighteenth time of chasing off—the cighteenth time being really just when the fun begins. Sometimes he passes over a red nose daltogether, probably from a fear of ageravating the gout i his feet, 1 am a little more