REMINISCENCES FROM THE MELBOURNE ZOO. 
3 
managed to pick the lock of her door, and got out. A crowd collected 
after she had found a coign of vantage on top of an aviary, but no one 
seemed to have seen her get there. A man rushed to one of the keepers 
in great excitement. “There’s a lion loose over there!” he cried, as he 
pointed to the crowd congregated about the owl house. There was a 
facing board projecting all round the top of the aviary, and all that 
could be seen above it was the dim outline of something russet-hued. It 
really looked as much like a lion as anything, and no one thought it was 
Mollie until she cautiously peeped over to scan the surging crowd below. 
When the people saw there was no danger from a sudden spring from 
a lion, they stormed the aviary and hoped for great fun. Two of the 
keepers quickly got a ladder and climbed to the roof of the aviary. Mr. 
Wilkie stayed below in the hope of being able to catch her should she 
take the whim of evading the men by sliding down the side. She 
watched them come up, one going along one side of the roof, and the 
second going in the other direction. She calmly got up and walked 
up and down the very centre — where she knew they could not follow 
or reach her. For about twenty minutes she kept up these aggravating 
pranks, until Mr. Wilkie feared something had gone wrong. He mounted 
the ladder, and as soon as he called “Come along, Mollie!” she waddled 
over to him at once, put her long arms about his neck, her feet around 
his waist, and looked confidingly into his face, as much as to say she was 
satisfied there would be no trouble for her. Then she looked back 
suspiciously at the two keepers crawling on hands and knees on the 
narrow parapet, and clung closer to him for protection. It was no 
small task to get down the ladder with her great weight hanging so 
awkwardly on him, but Mr. Wilkie had not the least difficulty in getting 
her back to her cage. She was delighted to see the door open, and 
sprang into safety with a real and intense sigh of relief. 
Like all the higher type of monkey, Mollie loves to get a tool to work 
with. If the carpenter is doing any work in her compartments, she must 
be lent the hammer, or the chisel, and if she can also get a nail or two, 
she will hammer them into her floor with great precision, never once 
hitting her thumb or fingers as most humans of her sex do so beautifully. 
When the nail is far enough down, she sets to work to lever it out 
again, and if she finds it too hard to pick out with her fingers, she sets 
her brains puzzling to find assistance. Many a clever lever has she 
constructed, and as her patience is infinite, she always achieves her end. 
People love to watch her at work, and they bring her all manner of 
queer things to see what she will do with them; but surely the limit of 
strangeness was reached when a lady dentist brought her the plaster 
model of a double set of artificial teeth! What she expected of Mollie 
