2 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 



iiuentiveness; l)ut these left only nightmare recollections of footsoreness and 

 headache, so that the name of Kensington brought a baci taste to the mouth, 

 till one memorable day when we discovered, patiently waiting just round the 

 corner for us there, the great Natural History Museum, and at the door, ready 

 to unlock its treasure-house before two pair of the most excited eyes in all London 

 that day, our old Scotch neighbor, donor of the famous Peacock butterfly. 



But for the "Zoo," midsummer day itself was all too short, and this in spite 

 of its having had long leagues of lee-way to make up in the affection of one of 

 us. As a boy of eight or nine 1 had been taken there once before, and the recollec- 

 tion was anything but pleasant. We all have, even in adult life, our ofT-days, 

 when we are at loggerheads with the whole world and the universe flies to 6's 

 and 7's. At such times the boy of eight appears "possessed" and goes about 

 not merely tempting fate, but actually goading the imps of vengeance into 

 fury. On the wariest urchin that ever played in Tom Tiddler's ground fall 

 sooner or later humiliation and the heavy hand of outraged propriety. On this 

 occasion our superstitious Scotch nurse, with grave shaking of the head, would 

 have pronounced me "fey" and come nearer the mark, I verily believe, than the 

 matter-of-fact Sassenach who declared I had got out at the wrong side of the 

 bed that morning. Whether I had or not I cannot remember, and all I know 

 for certain is that things went wrong from the very start. Long before break- 

 fast I sallied out into our host's garden and tested the blade of a new knife 

 on the stem of a valuable creeper that was being trained up the side of the 

 house; from here I made my way into the barnyard and tried to teach some young 

 ducks to swim under water, so that when "Joe" the farmhand came to their 

 rescue, two of them were at the last gasp with upturned eyes. Finally, being 

 dared by one of my cousins to vault ov'er the widest part of the duck pond, I 

 essayed the impossible; my pole stuck upright in the middle of the pond and 

 I slid ingloriously down into a watery bed of chickweed and had to be rushed 

 into the carpenter's shop to be dried out, surreptitiously, in time for the train 

 journey. When taxed l)y my uncle, on reports from the indignant custodians 

 of garden and barnyard, and confronted with a long list of acts of wanton mis- 

 chief — most of them undeniably a true bill — I burst out laughing in his face; it 

 was then, I suppose, that the avenging Furies took me and the situation in hand. 



Retribution came with anything but halting gait. Arrived at the Zoo, 

 I must needs choose a Bactrian beast instead of the camel to have a ride on. 

 Camels were too ordinary, we had seen them at the circus and they had only 

 one hump; besides my brother had chosen the camel, so nothing would do but 

 I must be hoisted up between the two hairy humps of this queer looking squeal- 

 ing quadruped for my ride. But alas! the brute was ill-tempered and bolted 

 from its keeper; before it could be rounded up I got pretty badly shaken and 

 worse frightened. My brother witnessed this whole scene of my discomfiture 

 with huge delight from the back of a docile camel, and his ill-concealed grins 

 on my tearful return were more than I could stand. After fiercely denying 

 that I had been a bit afraid, I managed to break away from the rest of the party 

 to do some sight-seeing for myself instead of providing a spectacle for others. 



Where all the jungle and prairie life of the tropics were gathered into a 

 single park, one didn't have to go far for thrilling adventures; indeed, one was 

 fairly jostled on all sides by weird-looking foreigners, such as anteaters, tapirs. 



