260 THE RING OF NATURE 



they ring deliberately in order to attract attention. 

 Some of the monkeys in the side cages rattle their 

 bars for the same purpose, and one whines for 

 alms almost with words. You have only to hold 

 up a piece of sugar to one of the elephants and he 

 will gravely pirouette for it. A wave of the arm 

 sends him round the other way, and then he puts 

 out his trunk and claims his wage. Some say 

 that the lower animals have no reason. I can 

 only say that the acts by which we recognize 

 reason in a child are not more striking. 



There are many interesting creatures that you 

 do not see though you go round the Zoo many times. 

 The beaver is almost always within his igloo, and 

 that is a great pity, for there is not a more 

 astonishing instance of adaptation that his broad 

 mason's trowel of a tail. There are two badgers 

 from Cumberland of a most unusual colour, the 

 stripes being in sandy yellow and white instead of 

 the usual black. We see neither them nor the 

 normally coloured specimens unless we ask the 

 keeper to turn them out from their beds for a 

 minute. Once a keeper did the same kind turn 

 with a Tasmanian wolf. Out rushed the gaunt 

 creature, snarling and snapping at having to face 

 daylight. We felt as though we were in the 

 presence of the prehistoric life. It is a tiger 

 with wolf's jaws, a creature compounded of the 

 ferocious and the grotesque that might have been 

 invented by some carver of gargoyles instead of 

 created by the same Power that made the squirrel. 



