CHAPTER VI. 



HORNS AND ANTLERS. 



" High o'er his front his beams invade the skies." DRYDEN. 



THERE is one great and obvious disadvantage in the 

 study of animal life at the Zoo. We do not see the 

 creatures in their native freedom. How different the lion 

 as we watch him through the bars of his den, mumbling 

 the thigh-bone of a horse, from the lion as he steals noise- 

 lessly on his prey by the side of some African streamlet 

 in the fading twilight of evening. How different the eagle 

 as he sits motionless upon his perch, the picture of dis- 

 consolate inactivity, from the eagle as he soars aloft among 

 the mountain fastnesses, or swoops sudden upon its quarry. 

 How different the patient antelope mewed in his straw- 

 littered pen, from the chamois as I have seen him among 

 the glaciers of the high Alps, or the wild buck leaping 

 from point to point among the sandstone blocks of Table 

 Mountain. On the other hand, we have at the Zoo an 

 opportunity of studying quietly and at leisure the form 

 and features of animals, still instinct with the grace of 

 life, if not still thrilling with the joy of freedom. From 

 all that I have seen of living antelopes in South Africa 

 my image of the creature would be no more defined than 



