FUN'-LOVING KAGUS. 247 



If, however, you were to join one of these groups 

 of spectators and watch his antics, I feel sure yon 

 would acknowledge him to be as funny as any hu- 

 man being or monkey you ever saw. 



He has such an old-fashioned, high-shouldered, 

 learned look when you first see him that you can not 

 help respecting him, much as if he were really and 

 truly the wise old professor he looks to be — a Ger- 

 man professor, perhaps, such as you have seen pic- 

 tures of — a professor in a gray dressing gown, with 

 his hands behind him, and his head and long red 

 nose thrust forward, nodding at every step as he stalks 

 solemnly about, rapt in silent meditation. 



The dignity and seriousness of his gait and expres- 

 sion, indeed, are something that must be seen to be 

 appreciated ; as must also the suddenness with which 

 all this — his stately, formal, and decorous deport- 

 ment^disappears. 



AU at once his sleepy companions, dozing on their 

 perches or meditatively dressing their feathers and 

 pluming themselves, awake to the fact that they have 

 a feathered terror among them, and that the hitherto 

 unobtrusive kagu, whom they had found no particular 

 occasion to notice before, has apparently gone mad. 

 "With wide-open beak and outspread wings, with a 

 sudden development of an ominous and most pre- 

 posterous crest where none was to be seen before, 

 and a harsh, rattling noise, he rushes at the frightened 

 inmates of the aviary; he drives them frantically 

 squalling, shrieking, and flapping in every direction ; 

 he chases and upsets them, and is not satisfied until. 



