L1G-LAGS AT 71 ZOO.

vou please, fill him with somewhere about double his own bulk of food, and let him go again. In two minutes you shall find that bird gravely prospecting about and making all sorts of cxperimental borings—for somcthing to cat. And birds show the most extraordinary conviction of the edibility of the world in general. Most birds will extract nourishment somchow from a brick, an old nail. or a broken bottle @ those who can't will try. And when a certain tract has been scarched through, pebble by pebble, and found to be absolutely barren, then they will begin on it agam, on the off-=chance of a thrown brick or the passing of some human crceature in the meantime having left hehind i something to cat. Here most of the birds are ommivorous—certainly none arc vegetarians but the doves,

VEGETARIANS,

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e . -~ T A AN o. Y

AR e PR A H A N4 el AR 3

G The doves: as vegetarians, repre-

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= V) causc, or the hehel, or whatever

o -*\\" 1t 1s, rather The 2 dove can never do anything much \\// \ credit, being rather an insignificant )// é’, humbug itscll. Here, in contrast T with the rest, you observe it as a

AN - miserably mactive and sulky little SHE GOODATUMOURED TR, bird, who won't join anything clse m - a hopeless food-hunt, but is as greedy as all the rest together when the keeper brings a regular meal. Also it growls and fumes angrilv at the friendly approach of any other bird—a bird probablv who would make little trouble of eating it at a sitting, beak and all. And sitting in fluffy little groups of two or three, it grunts pharisaically at the good-humoured ibis below, as he tosses his long beak and swallows whatever animal b food it may have found him. The dove takes life more casily than e any ol the other birds in the place, and still goes about (or, more v~ ordmarily, sits still) grambling, peevish, and spiteful.

The flamingoes forming the upper ten (as well as four can) in this little world, insist on being scrved from a lordly pail, from which, their heads being inverted, their upper beaks scoop. The herong although no inferior scarcher of the ground, will never trouble un- necessarily about provisions already in a safe place. No provisions are in a safc place here among s0 many birds : bur Jerry, the solitary purple heron in the cage just bchind us, has

a tiny pond to himsclf. Throw a little fish therein, soon after Jerry's dinner. Jerry, without leaving his pereh, will inspect it narrowly —from above, to sce if it be alive 5 from the side, to judge of its plumpness:anl from cach other dircetion. for purposes which any other mtelligent heron will at onee understand. Then Jervy will return to his sicesta, his next snack assurcd, for he knows that the fish can never leave the pond.

A NARROW INSPECTION.