REMINISCENCES FROM THE MELBOURNE ZOO. 
237 
must be indulged in this depraved taste. The honey-eating birds get 
through about twenty-eight pounds weight of sugar every three weeks. 
They live exclusively on this sweet water. Once they were given honey, 
but it was found it made them too fat; and they became subject to epil- 
eptic fits on this diet. Now they are quite free from such unpleasant- 
nesses. Rice and potatoes are used in large quantities. The monkeys 
like nothing better than potatoes boiled in their jackets. These they 
break open and rub on the wire-netting into a fine powder, which they 
eat with a relish. Dog biscuits must be always available for the flam- 
ingoes and for the giraffe; and carrots are liked by practically every- 
thing that is not exclusively flesh-eating. Cabbages are needed in 
quantities ; lucerne hay and chaff ; all kinds of grain, sunflower seeds, 
canary seed, hemp seed, and finally, fish, must all be in the larder before 
the dinner of the captives at the Zoo can be said to be complete. Hap- 
hazard feeding is useless, and since it means death to a wild animal to 
tell it to eat what is put before it and be thankful, the keepers have found 
it necessary to be far more indulgent to the whims of their charges than 
we are to the human child. 
