Crossing over to the big case on the other side, we see another cliff, bare and gray, and covered with white birds—geese and gulls of many different sorts. This is a copy of a bit of a famous rock off the coast of Scotland called the Bass Rock, which rises out of the sea like an enormous stone many hundreds of feet high. At the times of the year when birds make their nests it is white with wild sea-birds, and the nests are laid along the crevices and shelves of the bare rock, so near together that the birds can easily touch one another while they are sitting on them. If anyone fired a gun near the rock there would be a sudden flight up into the air of hundreds of birds all at once, like a gigantic cloud, flying, whirling, screaming, mixed up together, rising higher and higher in great circles till you would feel stunned and deafened and almost frightened, as if a piece of the sky had suddenly taken shape and broken up over your head. These wild birds know they are safe on the Bass Rock, and they take no care to protect their nests; no one could climb up those sheer precipices and steal the eggs. The birds sit there safely, looking down upon such heights as would make you giddy even to see; and in front the blue sea stretches for miles. It is a wild, free life.
Going back down the room, there may be time to notice the cases on the sides of the partitions full of stuffed birds, many very beautiful, but not so interesting as those that are shown with their nests and young ones. Quite near the door is a case with some large birds as tall as a child of seven in it. They are cassowaries, with drooping dark-brown feathers that look rather out of curl, and necks of crimson and blue. Further on there is a family of ostriches, the great father bird very grand and with a black coat, and magnificent white tail-feathers—those feathers that ladies buy for their hats, and for which they give so much money. Ostriches are kept on farms in South Africa, and their tail-feathers are pulled out at certain seasons of the year; and then they grow, again and are soon ready to be pulled out again, and people make much money this way. I do not know how much pain this gives the ostrich, but it cannot be pleasant; and perhaps he wishes sometimes he was not quite so grand, but was dressed in a plain dull-brown suit trimmed with dirty white like his humble wife. The ostrich is very savage, and can never be depended on; he may turn upon the keeper who has fed him and cared for him for years, and, seizing him, kick him with his great feet until he is stunned, or dance upon him for no reason at all. He does not look safe; his narrow flat head and cruel eyes would make you think he was a tyrant. The little ones running about at his feet look so ridiculously small in comparison that you would hardly think they could be his children; but in time they, too, will grow big like papa and have splendid tails, and lord it over their poor wives.
On the other side of the room are birds of paradise, who have also beautiful tails, but in quite a different style from the ostrich. They are smallish birds, but their long tails, reddish or yellowish in colour, fall like cascades or fountains of water on both sides. Ladies also wear these in their hats sometimes when they want to be very grand. Near them is one of the birds with the queerest habits of any bird. It builds a little bower or grotto, and decorates it with shells and whatever else it can pick up—it really seems to like to make it pretty; and then it runs about in and out of its bower for amusement. So it is called the bower bird. These birds live in Australia, and their bowers are made of bits of strong grass or thin stick woven over to make a sort of tunnel through which the bird can run. But the funniest thing is that they like to put bright things, such as shells or pretty stones about for decoration.
We must now leave the birds, which have taught us so much, and go on to other galleries. Just across the great hall is a long gallery entirely filled with the bones and skeletons of animals which are now no longer found on earth. This does not sound attractive, but it is, almost more so than the birds we have just left, though, of course, we shall not find anything pretty here.
Have you ever heard that there was a time when huge animals, larger than the largest elephant, lived and walked about on earth, not only in hot countries, but in England, too? If man lived at all in those days he must have been a poor, frightened, trembling little creature going in peril of his life from all the monsters who were around him. In England the river Thames was surrounded by a thick jungle, with mighty trees and creeping plants, like the jungles in India; and the climate was hot and steamy like the inside of a greenhouse. Here lived enormous elephants called mammoths. As we enter the gallery we see one in front of us, a monstrous creature, who makes the ordinary elephant put behind him to compare with him seem small. But larger still is the head of another behind that again. Can you even imagine a beast that could carry tusks about twelve feet long? That is to say, if two of the tallest men were laid end to end they would be as long as that elephant's tusks, and the thickness of the tusks was as great as a man's thigh. Think of all this weight! And it was resting on the head and neck of the elephant! His strength must have been like the strength of an engine. You would have been less to him than a mouse is to us. It is not only guessing that makes us say these animals lived in England, for here are the real skulls and skeletons actually found buried in the earth. Further on is what is called a sea-cow, a great fat beast weighing an enormous amount, which floated in the sea. And at the end of the room is one of the strangest of animals. Picture a creature as high as the room, standing up on its hind legs like a kangaroo, and having very strong fore-arms, with which it clutches a small tree. This is the skeleton we see now. It could have packed you away inside it and never known you were there; but, luckily for the children who lived on earth when it did (if there were any), it did not eat flesh, but only the leaves of trees and other vegetable things. It was called the giant ground sloth, and, as you may judge from this name, was not very quick in its movements. It was not found in England, but in South America, and there are now no more like it in existence; and if we had not got its skeleton we should never have known it had lived at all. There were many other curious creatures on earth then—some that lived in the water and had long necks like snakes, and fat bodies, and others like enormous lizards. There was also a big bird, bigger even than the ostrich, this you can see in a case near the sloth. Then in the centre of the room is the tall skeleton of a very, very big stag, which is to other stags as a giant would be to you. He is the Irish elk, and his skeleton was found in the peat bogs of Ireland; he must have been a magnificent creature to look at when alive, with his proud, free head and branching horns.
Passing through the hall, we see three or four cases showing examples of the different colours of animals—the white ones among the snow, and the yellow ones on the sand, the protective colouring of which we spoke before; and on the staircase sits a statue of Darwin, the wonderful man who found out this about animals, and also many other wonderful things, and made us see animal life in altogether a new way. When you are a little older you will find many things of great interest in Darwin's books. Upstairs on one side is a gallery full of humming-birds, tiny birds some of them, no bigger than butterflies, and as brilliant as jewels, red and blue and green and yellow. It must be wonderful to see them flashing about in their native land and hovering over the gorgeous flowers; but here, so many together in one case, they lose half their beauty, and they lack the sunshine to bring out their lovely colours. There is also a gallery full of pressed flowers, and here you can learn anything about flowers, leaves, and seeds; and on the other side there is one full of stuffed animals. Now, we have seen the living animals at the Zoo, and we do not care to see the dead ones here so much, though we can just glance around it. But there is one animal you must see, because there is no living animal like it in the Zoo.
This is a new animal called the okapi, only discovered during the last fifty years in the dense forests of Africa, and its skin was stuffed and set up and is now here. One would have thought that all the animals now living would have been known long ago, and it seems almost ridiculous to speak of a 'new' animal; but this one was new to us. He is very much like a mixture of several other animals. He is about the size of a large antelope, and he has a long upper lip like a giraffe, and a meek, patient face. His back slopes down like a giraffe's, too, and his body is a reddish colour like that of a cow; but his hind-legs are striped like a zebra. Now, what do you think of that for a new animal? You or I might have invented something more original. It is just as if he had been round to the other animals, and said: 'Please, I want to live. Will you give me something?' And the antelope had said: 'Well, you may be rather like me in size, but don't make yourself a shape that anyone could mistake for me.' So the poor, meek okapi had made himself the colour and size of the antelope, but had taken the sloping back of a giraffe; and then he had gone to the antelope, and said: 'Will this do?' And the antelope had not been altogether pleased, and he had said: 'Humph! I'm not sure if it will; you've taken my colour, too. Some fool might think you were me at a distance.' So the meek okapi had added a few stripes on his legs, like a zebra, just to make him less like the scornful antelope.
He lives in dense forests, and eats grass as a cow does, and is very shy; and the only people who have seen him alive are the natives, who told an Englishman about him, and then managed to shoot one, and bring its skin to sell to the Englishman. But now that he is known of, it will probably not be long before a live one is captured. He is so gentle that they might make him into what is called a domestic animal, like the cow; if he once understood that men were his friends and did not want to hurt him, then his shyness might vanish, and his gentleness would make him safe and easy to deal with.
In this gallery we see all the animals of the Zoo, stuffed and peaceful. The tiger no longer prowls round and round his cage when the dinner-hour draws near, he will never be hungry again; the lion no longer is angry when the crowd stare, he cannot see them; the patient elephant has given up for ever carrying children on his back, and the hippo has ceased to wallow in the waters of his beloved bath. Even the silver-white polar bear does not mind the heat, and pines no longer for his ice and snow. All are at rest, at rest!