330



Dr. E. Hopkinson,



Marabou respect the dishes before the arrival of the guests ; and in

spite of their surveillance and their switches, which they carried m

terrorem, a boiled fowl or two would suddenly disappear every now

and then ; one snatch of that enormous beak, one gulp of that

barathrum of a throat, and the pullet was gone.”


The last sentence is perfect in its cinematographic descriptive¬

ness. As did this bird of the early days of West Africa, so did ours

of the early days of this century, except that I do not think he ever

managed to collar such valuable dishes as even African fowls are

now that one does not pick up handfuls of gold even on the Gold

Coast, and I know that he never got boiled ones, for these are

anathema maranatha to his owner. He, too, however far away he

might have been at other times, was always about the compound at

“ chop-time,” and never had two or three miles to cover at the last

moment.


Pelicans, Emus, and other large birds are noticed, but nothing

is said about small birds, so that we may presume that they were

entirely absent from the collection or in very small numbers and

hidden away somewhere, probably in the Parrot-house, and perhaps

in those little glass-topped boxes, which are now no more than a

hideous memory. Certainly there was nothing at all resembling the

large aviaries of the present, the Western, the Waders, and best of

all, the Summer aviary, where visitors can walk practically among the

birds. The Eagles at this time were kept, I suppose, in the range of

aviaries, the base and back of which now stand derelict alongside the

tea-place and forming a place for any overflow from that table-dotted

area. The Eagle-house, the Quarterly Keviewer confesses, he never

passes without a pang : many still feel the same. Eagles never look

happy in captivity, though I expect that it is more a matter of looks

than anything else, for birds must be like people—among both are

some who cannot possibly look happy even in the midst of happiness.

His pity is also excited by a Blackcock, for which there was only “ a

coop instead of the wide-spreading moor, and the soiled and trampled

turf instead of the fresh wild heather ! Better, far better (he muses)

“ for him to roam, with the chance of being


‘ Whistled down with a slug in his wing,’

than to linger out a cheerless unnatural life thus.”



