POOR JACK. 233 



geniuses, and their presence in the Aviary would be a decided 

 attraction. 



In no part of the Eegent's Park Gardens are there so many 

 interesting and imposing looking animals crowded together as in 

 the long narrow strip which lies north of the public drive, and to 

 which we make our way through the tunnel. Here are to be 

 found the huge herbivorous mammalia of Africa, the Elephant, 

 the Rhinoceros, the Hippopotamus, the Giraffe, and the rest of 

 them, with the beautiful series of Antelopes, and the great 

 Struthoid Birds of Africa, Asia, and America. 



A few steps from the tunnel brings the visitor to the fine 

 umbrageous walk in which on bright summer days you are pretty 

 sure to meet Chuny the perambulating Elephant, shuffling along 

 with his howdah filled with delighted and yet half-frightened 

 children. The Zoological Society is under a cloud just at present 

 in respect to elephantine wealth. It has never yet made good 

 the loss it sustained years ago by the death of poor Jack, who 

 was the most good tempered and amusing of elephants ; hardly 

 inferior, one would suppose, to the worthy of which Pliny tells us 

 that, not being " so good of capacity to take out his lesson and 

 learn that which was taught him, and being beaten and beaten 

 again for that blockish and dull head of his, he ivas found study- 

 ing and conning those feats in the night which he had been learn- 

 ing in the daytime." Apropos of " dissection," when poor Jack 

 was cut up, Professor Owen was well-nigh paying a terrible 

 penalty for the zeal with which he prosecuted the work. In en- 

 deavouring to extract the brain whole, he wounded his left hand 

 in two places, and though the larger wound was immediately 

 cauterized, dangerous symptoms began to exhibit themselves, and 

 for a while his friends were greatly concerned for his safety. 

 The elephants hitherto exhibited in the Gardens, as indeed all 

 that have yet been brought to this country, are from India, the 

 African Elephant being one of the good things which the Zoolo- 

 gical Society are hoping to receive from Dr. Livingstone. 



It will appear very disrespectful no doubt to that pre-eminent 

 "lion" of bygone times, the Hippopotamus, to pass him, or 

 rather them, by without a word ; but pass them by we must, for 

 all that : so, too, with their next-door neighbours, the Giraffes, 

 those slim, clean, "young-lady animals," as Leigh Hunt calls 

 them, for the reader is growing tired ; and here at the very ex- 



