REMINISCENCES FROM THE MELBOURNE ZOO. 
143 
to her, and Mr. Wilkie and her keeper found it necessary to try to calm 
her by any means in their power. She knew they were sympathetic. 
She desperately needed sympathy, and so she came up to them in a 
strangely human way, and put her head down to their faces, inviting 
some of the petting she had been quite content to do without in the hey- 
day of her happiness. When they sat down on the grass, she lay down 
too, and rested her head on their shoulders. But as soon as they moved, 
she would spring up excitedly, and make one bound off to the house, 
where now she knew there was nothing, but where lately her partner 
had lain so appallingly still. She sniffed at the door whence he had 
been carried, and then resumed her intolerable race around her grounds. 
The two men found it impossible to quieten her unless they actually 
sat beside her and petted her. She was crying continuously, and did 
not stay still a moment unless they were stroking her or talking sooth- 
ingly to her. About midnight Sam Tospell crept away at Mr. Wilkie’s 
desire, because he was too fragile to do without a night’s sleep, and Rosie 
let him go very reluctantly, but as long as she had one man with her she 
offered no insuperable objections to the other’s departure. There had 
been a hurricane lantern placed in the ground for lighting up the 
scene, but she showed such a distaste for it that it had to be put out 
and she was allowed to nurse her grief in darkness, or merely by the 
beams of the late moon. Mr. Wilkie tried repeatedly to get away, but 
each time she became so panic-stricken at the bare idea of being left 
to face that fearful solitude alone, that he abandoned the attempt at last, 
and spent the night by her side, smoking and considering how near to 
man came what were usually condescendingly termed the “brute” beasts. 
No vigil he had ever spent in the house of death had been characterised 
by greater appreciation of its mystery or more acute sense of its woe. 
With morning light anxious, faithful Sam came down hurriedly 
to relieve the watcher, and to comfort the bereaved. Rosie received him 
with a sadness that lifted her right out of the realm of the animal world. 
She deigned to allow Mr. Wilkie to go, but she must have one of them. 
It was many days before she would stay alone, and it was a long time 
before she could be persuaded to enter her house without fear or dread. 
She got into the habit of creeping up cautiously to the door, sniffing 
suspiciously and then bounding away in mortal terror. Then gradually 
she grew accustomed to the idea of life alone, and time reconciled her to 
her fate. Had it not been for the war, she would have been provided 
with another partner soon after her mate’s death. One was secured 
in Cairo, and is said to be a splendid specimen of the quaintly termed 
“camelopard,” but difficulties of transportation have stood in the way 
