A WALK ROUND THE ZOO 257 



half grown still takes an occasional gambol in the 

 passage or the yard. You can go home and say 

 you have patted him or even been knocked down 

 by him. You can, on the one hand, stroke a 

 puma, and, on the other, look through a little hole 

 at the fiercest beast in the Zoo, a black jaguar that 

 spits at you like all possessed, to show you that 

 nothing shall ever tame it. 



Best of all tigers are the pair of Siberians always 

 to be seen, one or both, on the roof of their shed in 

 the yard at the back of the lions. Their hair is 

 rougher and longer than that of the Bengal tiger. 

 The unrecognized reason why the Londoner likes 

 them is that the Chinese have painted their tiger 

 far better than the Indians have painted theirs. 

 When you have seen the Siberian tiger in Chinese 

 water-colour or needlework at the British Museum 

 and also in the flesh at the Zoo, you have a 

 composite idea of prehistoric magnificence and 

 fleshly grace far richer than can be inculcated by 

 the tigers of Indian art and reality. Our own 

 English sabre-toothed tiger must have been about 

 such another in many respects as his Hairiness of 

 Siberia. 



The bears fare uncommonly well now, especially 

 those half-grown ones that occupy the yard that 

 once belonged to the polar bears. A few years 

 ago we gave them sugar, only when the keeper 

 was not looking, but now the keepers have become 

 reconciled to this, and every one takes a bag of 

 loaf sugar for the bears. The bear in the pit 



