308 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



artist, that you do not overdo the horrible and make 

 your friend ridiculous. 



The intervention of the keeper was once needed in 

 order to see two promising young otters. But now 

 they have been put into the pond, where they play 

 all day like water-kittens, next door to the foxes that, 

 by standing on the top of their bank and looking hard 

 over the heads of the people, try to imagine that they 

 are in the midst of a moorland solitude. There is 

 another animal in a den here that must be routed out 

 in order to be seen, an animal labelled with the 

 unstimulating name of " Common badger (var.)." But 

 he is to the badger-lover an astonishing specimen. 

 All that is black on an ordinary badger is sand-colour 

 in these two from Rutland and Staffordshire respec- 

 tively. Truly a delightful " var." of the common 

 badger. 



There are two ways of seeing the squirrels. One is 

 to take pea-nuts or other delicacies and walk round the 

 enclosure, followed by the lithe mendicants. Another 

 is to stand there quietly and witness their manoeuvres 

 with the floating capital that is already theirs. One 

 has a pea-nut in its mouth, which after much recon- 

 noitring it pretends to bury twice or thrice, then really 

 buries it, smooths the grass over it, and leaves the 

 place as nonchalantly as possible. He has been 

 closely watched, however, and has scarcely gone a 

 yard when another pounces straight on the cache, digs 

 up the nut, and pretends to eat it. But he in turn 

 only buries it again after several feints, and thus the 

 game goes on. 



In the reptile-house there are some tenderfoot rattle- 

 snakes from Texas. They are magnificent serpents, 



