96 
ALMOST HUMAN 
THE PERSIAN CAT. 
I am sure everybody will fall in love with the beautiful Persian cat 
in the illustration, but unfortunately it died a day or two after the 
photograph was taken. It died suddenly, from no apparent cause, and 
the Veterinary College, making an autopsy to discover the disease, 
diagnosed it as pneumonia. Yet it looks the picture of health, does it 
not? It is most difficult to keep Persian cats very long in the gardens. 
They are luxury-loving creatures, and must have the petting and affec- 
tion and warm.th of home life to thrive, and even seem to miss the 
handling that most kittens get from children. In spite of all the efforts 
made by the staff to make them comfortable and happy, they mope and 
pine, and need so much attention that joy in their beauty is tempered 
by anxiety for their welfare. 
SOME ORNAMENTAL BIRDS 
CRANES. 
There is a very fine collection of ornamental birds, especially of the 
aquatic varieties, at the Melbourne Zoo. On the various ponds are to 
be found numerous varieties of ducks, geese, and gulls, the ibises, the 
black and white swans, the flamingoes, and many other birds. But 
the cranes, that with the flamingoes would be the most beautiful of all 
in the water, or at its edge, are not to be found among them. These 
birds are at present confined to paddocks just behind the refreshment 
rooms, and they lose much of their beauty through being usually dust- 
stained. They were once put upon the ponds, but the havoc they 
wrought caused the sentence of banishment to be read against them, 
and thus they were placed in a number of small enclosures which had 
been thickly sown with buffalo grass and were really beautiful lawns. 
It did not take the birds, with their razor beaks, long to undo all the 
work of preparation. They set about the task of devastating their 
homes with much misdirected ardor and misapplied energy. Every 
root of grass was dug up separately in the hope of finding succulent 
white grubs underneath ; every inch of the surface was patiently and 
persistently dredged for worms until there remained only a dreary 
waste where the lawns had flourished. This was only a continuation 
