The Children's Book of London

by G. E. Mitton

We have stayed a long time at this lions' cage, and we must pass over all the rest of the lions—some of them born in captivity, who have never known the delight of a wild, free life—and go on to the great striped Bengal tiger, with his magnificent head and handsome face. There is not the same tremendous strength in his appearance as in the lion's, but there is something almost more terrible in his long, gliding body and catlike movements, more ferocious altogether. In the wild state the lion prefers to prey upon animals, and will not turn on man unless he is desperate. But a tiger sometimes takes to the life of a man-eater for no reason but because he likes the taste of human flesh; and once he has begun to eat human beings, he is a man-eater to the end of his days. He turns man-eater sometimes, too, when he is old and his strong teeth fail; and then he will hang about outside villages to pounce on a soft-flesh man, who is easier to catch than a wild animal.

Tigers are very fierce; a mother tiger with her cubs will attack anything. When the cubs are little she teaches them to hunt for themselves, taking them out with her on expeditions and showing them how to catch smaller animals, such as young calves or pigs, until they are strong enough to hunt larger ones, when they leave her and begin housekeeping on their own account. A great many tigers live in India, and many a wretched native has ended his life by being caught by one of them. You would think, to look at the royal tiger, with his reddish markings and black stripes, that he could be easily seen at a great distance, but this is not so. In the jungle where he lives the stems of the bamboos are light, and the markings of the tiger are so like his surroundings that you might get quite close to him and never know it. He walks through the dense thick jungle with the loose, springy step of a cat, and woe be to any luckless animal he sees! Sometimes he will find an enclosure with some young bullocks in it; then he will take one, and leave the others, for, unless he is a very young tiger, he does not kill for the love of it, but for food. He carries off his prey, and comes back a night or two after for a second one; and if the owner of the bullocks does not remove them he will soon have none left.

Quite near to the lion house, on the other side, is the reptile house, where live snakes, crocodiles, and lizards, and all sorts of curious animals. The most interesting are the enormous snakes, called boa-constrictors, with bodies nearly as thick as a child's, and many yards in length. They are not in cages, but in glass houses, like glass boxes. The glass is very thick and strong, and the snake does not dash himself against it to get out. He would not take the trouble to do that, for he moves slowly, and when you see him at the Zoo you would think him very lazy. There he lies, with his oily body, covered with little scales, hanging round the branch of a dead tree which has been put into his house, or perhaps lying coiled up on the gravel floor in rings and rings, so beautifully neat that you wonder how he can take the trouble to fold himself up so nicely before he goes to sleep. He certainly would not get crumpled if he lay anyhow, as your clothes would get crumpled if you did not fold them up. Watch him very closely. You can see he breathes, and perhaps he glances up and winks with one eye, or darts out a wicked little tongue. How can a creature like that, so big and so slow, ever get any food? Well, he can go fast enough at times, and he does not often want a meal, because he eats so much at one time that it lasts him for many days. He writhes his great body along the ground in the thick woods of his native country, and lies so still that you might tread on him without seeing him. He lives in Brazil and other parts of South America. Perhaps a young deer comes down to drink, all unconscious of the hideous beast lying in watch. He stoops his pretty head, then, with a writhing movement, the boa is upon him. The deer struggles frantically, but the great folds of the snake close ever tighter and tighter round him with a strength that breaks his delicate bones and squeezes the life out of him. When the animal, crushed and breathless, ceases to struggle, the boa opens his gaping mouth, and bit by bit the whole animal—it may be still palpitating—is forced into that awful throat. The snake cannot tear his prey; he has no hands or feet, no claws or hoofs. He can only swallow it whole. It would seem impossible sometimes that he could get that mass into his comparatively narrow throat; but his muscles are elastic. He stops half-way through his horrid meal and lies still to rest, then another swallow and another. In the meantime, his teeth, like little sharp saws bent backwards, covering all the roof of his mouth as well as the jaws, are firmly fixed into the victim, so that it cannot draw back. When the disgusting meal is done the great snake lies helpless and swollen, and has to wait until his food is digested before he can get about comfortably.

When he is in the Zoo he doesn't get anything so large as a deer, but rabbits and small things that he can swallow easily, and frogs, of which all snakes are very fond, perhaps because they are slimy and slip down quickly. There are many other snakes beside the boa, some not so large, but more poisonous. The boa is not poisonous. He relies on his huge strength to kill his enemies; but other snakes, such as vipers and rattlesnakes, are. Even when the head of a viper has been cut off it still remains poisonous, and may cause death. The rattlesnake is so called because it makes a funny rattle with its tail before it strikes. It is about five feet long sometimes, and the sound of its rattle sends terror into the heart of anyone who is near, as he knows that at any moment the snake may dart out upon him with its hideous head aloft and its wicked eyes gleaming. The rattlesnake is found in North America.

The reptile house has been rebuilt and is very hot and damp, to suit the animals who live there. In the middle there is a large tank with numbers of ugly crocodiles living in it. They are dark greeny-brown, like a log that has been a long time in the water, and if you were floating down the Nile, or any river where crocodiles live, in a boat, and saw something floating that you thought a bit of old wood, it might very likely be the back or head of a crocodile. He has a bony coat like a suit of armour, and it would be very difficult indeed to break through it, and he swims along, using both his strong tail and his flat feet. He is what is called an amphibious animal, because he lives partly on land and partly in the water. He must breathe air, but he can shut up his nostrils by a fold of skin as we shut our eyes, and can remain under the water without breathing for some time. His enormous jaws are like a pair of great shears, and woe be to any animal or man who gets his leg between them. It will be cut off as cleanly as the gardener cuts a tall flower with his shears. The crocodile lives in water, and catches fish and other things; he comes out at times and lies on the banks, and in the evening, when the land animals come down to drink, he hides himself in the water, and catches anything he can with his ugly snout. Fancy a dainty antelope finding suddenly that his delicate nose was pinched tightly by Mr. Crocodile's teeth, and that he was being drawn down, down to a hideous death!

But we have stayed much too long in the reptile house, and have not even mentioned the pretty little green frogs and the many other things to be found there.

On the other side of the lion house, away from the reptiles, is the sea-lions' pond. Sea-lions are not the least little bit like real lions, but when sailors heard them roaring on the rocks far out to sea they thought they must be lions, and so they gained the name. There are several of them at the Zoo, huge clumsy looking creatures with big whiskers, and a skin like india-rubber. At one end of their pond is a mass of artificial rock with caves and terraces, and when the sea-lions are out of the water they gallop about on this in an astonishing way, considering that they have no legs, and only end in a fish's tail. They lollop along on two front flippers and their strong muscular tail, and then plunge off the rocks into the water as quick as a flash of light. Once in the water they seem to be everywhere at once, their movements are so fast and graceful. Diving at one end of the pond, they are up at the other before you have had time to take breath.

The best time to see them is when they are fed, which is after the real lions. The keeper goes into the enclosure with a basket of fish, and in their excitement the sea-lions writhe and wind and chase each other till the pond seems full of gigantic eels. He throws the fish one by one in all directions, and the great beasts simply dance after them. Even after the last fish has gone, still the happy commotion continues for several minutes.