FOUND AT THE ZOO 



" Now let us go and see the elephants." Having just 

 seen the diving-birds fed, they would drag us at the 

 gallop down the slope and under the tunnel. It is of 

 no use trying to show them that the bees have bitten 

 holes in the comfrey blossoms and are sucking the 

 honey out at the back door. That is not one of the 

 things we came to the Zoo to see. The bees are not 

 in cages, neither have they been turned out of cages, 

 like the squirrels or the crested doves that nest by the 

 capybara's paddock. Sparrows in an empty monkey- 

 house, or mice running in the hippopotamus-den are 

 amusing, but we draw the line at the bees and the 

 flowers, the latter occupying such spaces as ought to 

 contain the jabberwock and other animal celebrities at 

 present unrepresented in the collection. 



So we have to content ourselves with the discovery 

 of things that have been put into the cages as exhibits, 

 but are, as it were, " hidden in sight." Nothing could 

 well be more conspicuous than a well-grown white 

 bear in a cage measuring ten feet each way, the front 

 all bars. He is artfully obliterated, however, by the 

 rival conspicuousness of two white bears next door but 

 one, dripping with water and about to plunge again 

 into their pond. No one looks at the solitary" polar," 

 20 305 



