236 BEASTS AND MEN 
animals should take so wide a leap as that which would be 
necessary to escape. 
The large park constitutes a community resembling in 
many ways a community of human beings. The passing 
visitor has but little idea of the varying incidents and occu- 
pations which fill the lives of the captive animals. As ina 
community of human beings, they make friends and enemies 
among one another ; they fall in love, and fall out of it again. 
There are births, deaths, and marriages, and a constant 
supply of news for the men whose duty it is to look after the 
creatures. Indeed there would be sufficient material to fill 
the columns of a small daily newspaper. Careful observa- 
tion is constantly kept on all the animals, and treatment is 
meted out to each according to its individual requirements. | 
Here, for instance, is a piece of news which comes in one 
morning from the Arctic Panorama, the rocks and waters of 
which are inhabited by polar bears, by reindeer, by various 
aquatic birds, and by walruses and other pinnipeds. The news 
isnot, perhaps, of fundamental importance; yet it is interest- 
ing in our little township. One of the seals, known as a sea- 
bear (a species of pinniped, by the way, which has never before 
been seen in Europe), has discovered a new way of amusing 
himself. His plan is to conceal himself beneath the surface 
of the water, and there narrowly observe the sparrows flutter- 
ing about on the brink. Then he would suddenly with 
lightning speed flash out of the water and seize a sparrow, 
with which he would slide back gently into the pond. There 
he would callously drown it, and, when it was no longer able 
to fly away, he would play about with it for an hour or more. 
This animal was much given to sport of this kind, and a few 
days later he succeeded in catching a rat which he maltreated 
after the same fashion. 
In the case of this sea-bear it was, of course, the love of 
play and not mere wanton cruelty which caused it to worry 
the sparrow and the rat. Love of play is, indeed, strongly 
developed in all animals, and contrivances should be invented 
