[ZIG-ZAGS AT THE ZOO]
By Arthur Morrison & J.A. Shepherd
XXIV.—ZIG-ZAG RODOPORCINE.
"Rodoporcine" is a portmanteau-word. It is not a regular scientific term, although, as I may claim with modest pride (being its inventor), it is almost ugly enough to be one. I have invented it largely for the benefit of the building (it is only one building) which the Zoological Society numbers six and seven, and divides arbitrarily into "The Swine House" and "The Rodents' House"; but chiefly I have invented it because I wanted a title for this Zig-zag. Rodo I gnaw, porcus a pig.
The Society have old authority for any amount of confusion between the swine and the rodents. The guinea-pig has long ago established its right to its name, on the indisputable grounds of being entirely unconnected with Guinea, and not a pig, but a rodent. The capybara is also called a water-pig (even in its Greek name) in virtue, doubtless, of being a rodent. "Porcupine" means a thorny pig; the name being again found convenient for a rodent, and enunciated with peculiar emphasis by the wag who wrote:—
Each hair will stand on end upon thy wig,
Like quills upon the frightful porcupig.
Then, by way of pleasant variation, the hedgehog derives its title from the fact of being neither a hog nor a rodent, but only a prickly kind of mole. So that confusion among pigs and rodents is an ancient, time-honoured, and respectable state of affairs, only feebly deferred to by the Zoological Society in placing the two side by side. Let us consider them, therefore, in a proper derangement and with a due regard to confusion.