358 WILD ANIMALS. 



Frank Buckland, in one of Ms amusing articles, gives an account 

 of his taking tlie Maori ciiief s, who were the first of their race to 

 visit England, to see the animals in the Zoological Gardens. " It 

 was most interesting," he writes, "to see how these men, who 

 have no mammal in their island bigger than a pig or a rat — horses 

 of course, where Europeans have colonized — were amazed at what 

 they saw. They gazed with wonder at the camel, they were silent 

 before the Hons, and were half frightened at the elephant, "We 

 persuaded them to ride upon the elephant, Mr. Bartlett going up 

 with them, and much they seemed to enjoy the ride when once up. 



" We then examined the zebra, with which they were highly 

 delighted. Our friends remarked that the zebra had tattooed his 

 face. ' He moko him face,' said they. This was a good idea, as 

 a zebra's stripes are not unlike tattoo marks. They afterwards 

 looked at the rhinoceros, which they all agreed was a " big porka." 

 " Big porka, me eat him." 



The stripes which these New Zealanders called moko marks, 

 and which to some extent, resemble the brindlings of a tiger, led 

 the ancients to give the zebra the name of hippotigris; for 

 although this animal is only to be found in South Africa, and with 

 the camel is noticeably absent from any of the Egyptian monu- 

 ments or wall-paintings yet discovered where animals are depicted, 

 still specimens were seen occasionally in Rome notwithstanding 

 the fact that the emperors had but little influence over that part 

 of the country from which they would necessarily have to be 

 procured. The cruel emperor Caracalla (a.d. 211 — 217), is re- 

 ported by Dion Cassius, the historian of the third century, to have 

 exhibited iu the circus, an elephant, a rhinoceros, a tiger, and a 

 hippotigris, but in that most wonderful collection of rare beasts, 

 prepared for the triumph of Gordian the Third, to which such 

 frequent reference has to be made, zebras were among the animals 

 that were probably seen for the first time by the Eoman people 

 in any number. Although originally intended to form part of 

 the pageantry contemplated by Gordian, the animals were in reality 

 exhibited by his murderer, Philip the Arabian, who wore the 

 purple as his successor, and celebrated the thousandth anniversary 

 of Rome by gratifying the tastes of the populace for ostentatious 



