We are now not far from the monkey house, where there are great cages the height of a room, with bars filled in by wire to prevent the monkeys from getting their little hands through to snatch, for if ever any saying was justified it is that one, 'as mischievous as a monkey'; yet, in spite of the bars, mischief is sometimes done. Stand near with a hat trimmed with flowers, and you will not have to wait long to prove it. That large monkey who has been sitting in a corner very quietly spies the brilliant flowers. He begins to move slowly and stealthily; then, with a sudden wild spring, almost before you realize what has happened, he has grabbed the bright flowers, torn them out, and danced back to the very highest corner of his cage, where, jabbering with delight, he picks the petals off one by one, and lets them float down to the ground. He is big, so none of the others dare take his prize from him; but woe betide any little monkey who finds such a treasure. He darts off with it, and then begins a wild race right across the cage; one monkey after another joins in, leaping in the air from one swinging rope to another, and springing up the bars of the cage. The little monkey jumps, catches a rope, drops to the ground, and springs at another rope. Now he is in a corner, the others have him; but no, with a dive and a wriggle he has slipped through them, and is chattering and grimacing on the other side of the cage.

Feed one of them with nuts, a little wrinkled black hand is put out to receive them; if you touch it, you will feel it cold and clammy. The little black palm holds the nuts for a second, and then the monkey crams them into its cheek, which makes a sort of pouch, and, retiring to the top of the cage, cracks them one by one, throwing down the shells just as a boy would do. They are very human the monkeys; you cannot help feeling all the time they know a great deal more than they pretend. Have you ever looked into a monkey's eyes? If not, do so the next time you have the chance; they are the saddest eyes on earth—just as if the poor little monkey thought a great many things in his small head, but could never express them, and so was very unhappy. There are a large number of monkeys at the Zoo; they are never still, and so funny that they make you laugh outright sometimes. The bigger monkeys, which are called apes, are also very interesting, but are in another house altogether. They have glass in front of their cages. Of all of them the chimpanzees are the most human, and one or two of these are in separate cages, where they are bathed in artificial sunlight all day long to keep them in good health, as they are very delicate.

One of the latest additions to the Zoo is a wonderful Aquarium, where all sorts of strange fishes and sea-creatures can be seen swimming about in natural surroundings, lit from above. From the huge wicked-looking octopuses with their snake-like feelers, to the tiny sea-horses with heads very like those of the knights in chess pieces, there are wonders untold.

On this side of the Gardens there are many things we have not yet seen, but we must leave them and see the big animals, the elephants and rhinoceroses. To reach these, we go through a tunnel and come up on the other side.

The first thing we see here is a row of most brilliantly coloured parrots; I do not suppose you ever saw such colours anywhere else—the brightest reds and blues and greens and oranges, all in the same bird. It seems almost impossible to believe that the feathers really grow like that; it seems as if someone must have taken a big paintbrush and daubed on the colours. If it is warm and fine the parrots are out of doors, each sitting on a perch, and tied by a little thin chain to one leg. What must it be to see them in their own native forests flying about among the green trees? Fancy, if we came across a great bird, as large as the largest doll, brilliantly coloured, flying about in the garden at home! The parrots come from South America, New Zealand, and Australia; so they like hot countries, but they seem to do very well in England, and look quite perky and happy. I will tell you what I think is the reason of this, the parrots are so conceited that they are pleased when people admire them, and they like nothing better than to be at the Zoo, where dozens of people come past every day and say:

'Oh, just look at that one! Did you ever see such a beauty? Look at his scarlet and blue! Now, who would have thought a bird could be like that?'

On dull or cold days the parrots are indoors, and if you go into their house you will hear a tremendous noise. All of them are shrieking and screaming at once. Perhaps suddenly in the midst of all this din you will hear a funny parrot voice saying: 'Thank you, my dear; Polly's quite well,' which will make you jump. When you turn round you will see it is one of the birds who is talking. They cannot all talk, and those who do just know a sentence or two without knowing the sense of it, and say it on all occasions; but very proud they are of the accomplishment. There are dear little green parrakeets, too, who fly about in flocks in Australia, looking like flights of animated green leaves.

Besides parrots there are in the same house toucans, birds who have enormous bills and rather small bodies—in fact, they seem to have spent their time growing bills. The bill, or beak, is like the claw of a lobster, and is rich orange colour. The toucan's eye has bright blue round it, and round that again orange colour. The bird himself is black, but he has tips of scarlet on his costume and a white throat, so he is altogether very grand, and he is so solemn that you think he must imagine himself very superior.

Just beyond the parrot house is a long range of buildings like a large stable, and here are the elephants and other big animals. Perhaps the elephant is out earning his living by walking round the Gardens with a seat on his back, on which anyone can have a ride who likes. He is very gentle and tame, though his enormous height and great swinging trunk make him appear rather fearful.

If he is at home, and we pay him a visit, he coils up his trunk or lifts it over his head, and shows a huge three-cornered mouth, into which, he gently insinuates, he would like you to throw biscuits. There are both Indian and African elephants, and the African are generally the larger.

Elephants as a rule have very good characters, and get fond of their keepers. They are big and gentle; yet in some cases they have suddenly turned savage without any apparent reason. In the wild state they live in dense forests, and unless they were very strong and their hides were very thick they could never get through the trees and shrubs at all; but they force them asunder with their great strength, and snap the long twining plants that hang from tree to tree. Any other animal would be wounded and torn with the spikes and thorns, but the elephant's hide is as strong as a board. He does not mind prickles, and the only sensitive part of him is just behind the ear, so when he is tamed a man sits on his neck, and with a little sharp-pointed spike pricks him behind the ear on the side he wants him to go. It does not hurt, but the elephant feels it and soon understands, and follows the directions as a horse follows the pull of the reins in driving. Elephants live entirely on green food and vegetables, and never want to eat flesh. In their forests they can find plenty of food, and they tear down great branches of rich trees with their long trunks, and then strip the leaves off neatly and put them into their mouths. When the elephant is thirsty he goes to a deep watercourse and drinks, and then, sucking up water in his trunk, he squirts it over his back and sides in a cooling shower-bath.

If you understood elephant language, and came here one evening when the day's work was done and there were no other people about, you might hear the elephants talking.

'Those silly fools of humans!' says the Indian elephant; 'not one of them can throw straight. I can tell you half my time is spent in picking up the bits of biscuit they mean to throw into my mouth and throw somewhere else. I would have a school for teaching them to throw straight if I were in authority. The bits are so little when you get them too—mere atoms.'

'Always thinking about eating,' says the African one, who is a lady. 'Really, I wish they would give you more hay or something to stuff yourself up with. For me, I don't care what I have to eat, but I do long for a little heat and a good plunge in a real river with soft muddy banks instead of my wretched tank sometimes.'

'Ah!' the Indian elephant answers, 'is there anything like it, that plunge after a long, hot, sleepy day, when one has stood about under the trees? I used to have a particular tree I always went and leaned against. It just fitted my side, and I wore the trunk quite smooth. And there I stood all the long, hot day, with sound of the rich forest life in my ears, the buzz and hum of the myriad things that fly and swarm, and the dense leaves kept off the sun; it was dark and hot. Then, when evening came, and it grew a little cooler, we used to join together, all of us who belonged to the same herd, and go down to the water. Then what romping and splashing, what trumpeting and fun! We squirted each other with mud and water, and came out fresh and cool. Ah, those were grand times!'

'You were a fool to get caught,' said the African one rudely, for she had not very good manners. 'How did it happen?'

The Indian elephant looked quite sad, and winked his little eyes as if he thought he should cry. 'It was a terrible story that,' he said, 'and the lesson is, never depend on women. I met one day a handsome elephant in the forest, who seemed to me the nicest I had ever seen. She was not very big, but her ears were particularly large, and hung down so gracefully; and as for her feet, I don't think I've ever seen such beautiful great flat feet on an elephant. Well, I loved her, and she seemed to like me, and we talked together and rubbed trunks, and were very happy, and I forgot where I was quite; and the next thing was I found I was shut in between high palisades, and when I tried to get out the gate was shut. And then men threw ropes over me, and tied my feet to great poles; and the wicked little elephant ran away grinning, for she was a decoy. You've heard of them perhaps—elephants who are tamed by humans, who teach them to be wicked and go out into the forest just in order to trap their own kind and bring them into captivity? It was sad, very sad!'

'But you are happy and contented here as a rule,' said the African.

'Yes, yes, I can't grumble; they are very good to me, and I get some exercise walking about, and as some day I shall grow old, it's as well, perhaps, to be looked after. It's terrible to be old when one lives in the forest; besides, I should feel strange to go back to the old life. I've been here now thirty years.'

'And I twenty. How time does go past!'

All this and much more you might hear if you knew the elephants' language, for they are quite too clever not to have some means of talking to each other.

The rhinoceros is very different. His eyes are wicked, he turns his head from side to side; he would like to stick that horn at the end of his nose into you if he could, and, holding you down with his great flat feet, rummage about inside you with it, and you would not live very long under that treatment. His skin hangs in great thick folds like plates of armour, and is so loose that it looks as if his tailor had fitted him very badly. He is much smaller than the elephant, and his thick-set body shows great strength. He is hideously ugly according to our ideas; but rhinoceros' ideas are different, and he would probably think the smooth pink-and-white skin of a child hideous. He lives in the jungle and eats the leaves of trees, which he tears off with his long upper lip. Some rhinoceroses have two horns on their nose and some only one. You can see both sorts in the Gardens. When the rhinoceros in its wild state has a little calf, as its young one is called, the little one runs along in front of the mother at the sound of any danger, and the mother follows in a wallowing trot behind, so that if necessary her body could guard it from danger. Sometimes hunters shoot rhinoceroses and kill them, and then eat part of them, which they say is very good, just like beef.

After leaving the elephant and rhinoceros house, we pass some sheds and yards, with deer and other animals, and then come to another set of buildings like stables, where there are the hippopotami and giraffes. If you thought the rhinoceros ugly, what will you think of the hippopotamus, with his great shovel-like nose and little ears? He looks like a stupid fat pig, only many, many times larger than the largest pig that ever lived. There are two of these animals in the Gardens now—a lady hippo, born at the Zoo, and about thirty years old, and another, quite a boy yet, only ten or eleven years old, who was born in the Zoological Gardens at Antwerp. Neither of them have known what it is to wallow in the soft mud on the sides of rivers or the joy of living wild and free; they are fat, sleepy, stupid, and contented. There is a tank in their yard at the back, and they are free to walk out as much as they please. Sometimes they lie in the water with only their backs out for a whole afternoon at a time.

The yards of the giraffe are next door, but separated by a high wire fence, so that even the long neck of the giraffe cannot bend over and touch the hippos. Of all animals, the giraffe is, perhaps, the most odd, his neck is so very long, and his markings so rich. He looks as if he had a stiff neck, he holds his head so high, and seems so grand. Giraffes are very delicate animals, and great care must be taken of them. When you think how difficult it must be to bring an animal with a neck like that over the sea and in a railway train to England, it seems wonderful that the Zoo ever owns one at all. Giraffes live on the open plains in Africa, and if they take fright they fly away over the ground with their long legs, covering yards at each stride. If ever a hunter gets near enough to one to throw a rope round him, he may think himself lucky indeed. If a giraffe has been caught like this, the hunters draw him, kicking and struggling, up to a tree, tie him there, and leave him to fight and try to get free for a whole day and a night; sometimes he fights so desperately that he kills himself. However, if he is still alive in the morning, the hunters come and find him exhausted, and they can then take him away without so much danger of being killed by a blow from his great hoof or a swing of his hard head, which he uses to strike with. Once down at the sea, a special place has to be made in the ship so that his long neck may not be cramped; and when landed in England there is a long box-like arrangement fitted on to a compartment of a train, and this can be bent down flat along the roof of the train when it passes under a tunnel. Just think of the many difficulties there are before a giraffe can be transferred from his native plains to England! If you look at a tall giraffe, with his sad, lovely eyes, you will think it cruel that he should be brought into captivity; but, after all, when he is here he is well looked after, and everything is done to make him comfortable. And if he had not been brought here, thousands of people would never have seen one of the most curious animals in the world. The giraffes at the Zoo are continually changing, for though some have been born here, they do not live long, and new ones have to be brought from Africa at great cost.

Not far from the giraffe house are the zebras, with their beautiful black and white stripes, looking like wonderfully marked donkeys. They are very wild and untameable and of uncertain temper; it is best not to go too near them. Well, with the zebras we have finished seeing all the well-known animals of the larger kinds, and so we must say good-bye to the Zoo, perhaps to come again another day.