Читать книгу Life at the Zoo: Notes and Traditions of the Regent's Park Gardens - C. J. Cornish - Страница 4

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Sudden and severe cold, however trying to human constitutions, seems almost harmless to animal health, provided the weather be dry, frosty, and undimmed by fog. On the last Friday of November 1893, the thermometer fell so rapidly that in a few hours it registered sixteen degrees below freezing-point. On the following morning, though the sun was shining brightly, every pool and pond was sheeted with ice, and the gravel walks were as hard as granite. Yet at the Zoological Gardens, birds and beasts from tropical or semi-tropical regions, such as Burmah, Assam, Malacca, and Brazil, were abroad and enjoying the keen air; and others, which are usually invisible and curled up in their sleeping apartments till late in the day, were already abroad, sniffing at the frost and icicles, and as indifferent to the cold as Mr. Samuel Weller’s polar bear “ven he was a-practising his skating.” A visit to the Gardens in such weather suggests a modification of too rigid ideas of the limitation of certain types of animals to warm or torrid climates, and illustrates the gradual and reluctant character of the retreat of species before the advance of the glacial cold in remote ages. No creatures are, as a rule, more sensitive to cold than the whole monkey tribe. Yet there is at least one species of monkey which habitually endures the rigours of a northern winter. One of the cleverest antique Japanese drawings at South Kensington represents a troop of monkeys caught in an avalanche of snow. The grotesque discomfiture of these pink-faced monkeys rolling down the hillside, helplessly clutching at each other’s bodies and limbs, grinning and grimacing as their heads emerge from the powdery snow, is something more than the fancy of a Japanese painter. The incident is probably drawn from an actual scene, and one of the creatures, the Tcheli monkey from the mountains of Pekin, was in an open cage in the gardens, and in far better health and spirits than in the height of summer. Its fur had grown thick and close, and the naked face had assumed the dark madder-pink with which it was adorned in the drawing. When presented with sticks crusted with frozen ice, it sucked the chilly dainty with great relish, and only showed signs of sensitiveness to cold by putting its fingers in its mouth, and then sitting on its hands to warm them. The behaviour of this northern monkey is only strange by contrast with the general habits of its kind. But the indifference to cold of the capybara, a gigantic water guinea-pig from the warm rivers of Brazil, is not easy to explain. Two of these quaint creatures had left their snug sleeping apartments, and were stepping gaily among pools of half-frozen water and broken ice. One had gained an extra coat by burrowing in its straw and then emerging with a pile upon its back; and, when this fell off, retired and shuffled on another pile; but the other seemed quite content to sit without protection in the sunniest corner of its enclosure. The whole colony of porcupines (six in number), which, like most semi-nocturnal animals, are very loath to appear in public during the day unless enticed by food of a more than usually tempting character, were abroad and in the highest spirits, erecting and rattling their quills, and sitting up to inspect their visitors like gigantic rabbits. It is difficult to conceive that a coat of quills can impart much warmth to its wearer; but towards Christmas the quaint black-and-white garment of the porcupine has almost the appearance of a mantle of stiff feathers; and the crest on the head and shoulders, sloping backwards along the spine, combines, with the black face and Roman nose, to suggest a comical resemblance between the fully-fledged porcupine and one of Buffalo Bill’s Sioux warriors in full costume of eagles’ plumes.

During the first cold of winter the plumage of the birds and the coats of the fur-bearing animals in the Zoo are hardly inferior to those of their wild kindred. Both the eagle and the American bison are in condition to excite the cupidity of an Indian brave. The bull bison, which in summer has a strangely ragged and “moth-eaten” appearance, with big patches of bare skin showing on its flanks, is now covered with a “buffalo-robe” of magnificent proportions and the richest colour and texture. From shoulders to tail, the body is wrapped in a mass of brown felted fur. The mane hangs down below the knees, and a shock of black and silky hair covers the head and face, almost concealing the horns and the sullen, bloodshot eye. This bull is said to be the largest of its race in this country, and is probably as fine a specimen of the male bison as ever led its band across the frozen plains of the North-West. It was brought to England by Lord Lorne after the completion of his stay in Canada as Viceroy of the Dominion, and spent its earlier days at the Home Park at Windsor, whence it was transferred on exchange to the Zoo.

The golden and sea-eagles never present so fine an appearance as in these bright winter days. Those who see them with their wings and tails ragged and broken in the summer and early autumn, would hardly recognize them in their compact and close-set winter plumage, as they scream aloud in the frosty air, and fly to and fro in their large aviary on pinions undisfigured by a single broken feather. The Gayal, an immense bison from the jungles of Assam, with a coat as smooth and sleek as the bison’s is shaggy and unkempt, drinks the iced water in its pen, and stamps the frozen ground—while the steam rises from its broad nostrils into the cold English air—with all the vigour of a shorthorn bull in a Surrey straw-yard; and the wild swine, whether from India or Europe, are equally indifferent to the weather. It would seem that all those species, such as the wild boar, or the buffalo and bison, which are widely distributed on many continents, adapt themselves rapidly to changed conditions of climate; and those wild boars which have been bred for several generations in this country and in Scotland, are rapidly developing a thicker and rougher coat of hair than their Indian cousins. It is probable that the tiger from Turkestan, if allowed the use of the outer cages, from which the Indian tigers and other large carnivora are withdrawn during the winter, would develop the thick and beautiful coat with which the northern tiger is represented in Chinese paintings. The bears, though so well wrapped up, take the frost as a hint to hibernate, and were for the most part fast asleep. Those which occupy cages facing the morning sun uncurl as the day grows brighter, and exhibit coats in the utmost perfection of winter growth. The black, brown, and cinnamon bears have at this time a bloom upon their fur which the utmost skill of the furrier fails to reproduce if the animal is killed at any other period of the year. In Southern and Central Russia many proprietors own large estates devoted to breeding horses and cattle. A menagerie of bears is often added to this. These are killed at the right season, and their skins sold in the best condition. Cloaks made from the skins of the six-months-old cubs have been sold for from £600 to £1000. Of the Polar bears, one, the older and larger, seems disposed to follow the example of the brown and black species, and to doze through the cold weather. The she-bear, much smaller and younger than its mate, takes its bath as usual, and plays with the floating ice like a baby with the soap. There it exhibits the most astonishing antics, turning back-somersaults, and standing on its head, or flinging out plates of ice with its nose and paws. No creature suggests such perfect indifference to cold as this Arctic bear, with icicles hanging to its fur, as it plunges again and again into its freezing bath.

The beavers are, of course, invisible, having long ago provided against the frost by plastering the wooden sides of the new house with mud and turf, and dragged a supply of dead branches as far as they could be forced to enter the narrow door. Though they are fed every day, and have nothing to fear from the weather, the instinct of winter storage is as strong as in the wild state. One is tempted to speculate whether this prudence is accompanied by any rational knowledge of the probable inadequacy of their stock to meet their natural wants. If their sense of quantity bears any proportion to their industry and skill in engineering, they must be full of anxiety and misgivings, for the few branches given to them are only make-believe, and they are wholly dependent on their captors for food. For some reason the rare European beavers, from the banks of the Rhone, have not thriven at the Zoo. Four out of six had died at the date at which this visit was made, and only one is now left in the Gardens.

Polar Bear. From a photograph by Gambier Bolton.

The demeanour of the inmates of the artificially-warmed houses ought not to differ greatly in frost, as the ordinary temperature is nominally preserved. In the Elephant and Antelope Houses such a day as that which we describe has little effect beyond giving an added briskness of demeanour to such creatures as are not, like the elephant and rhinoceros, too bulky and majestic to be exhilarated by mere accidents of temperature.

The Antelope House is redolent with a delicious perfume of the finest hay, and its graceful inmates nibble at their fragrant breakfast with the same dainty selectness which marks their habits at meals on less appetizing days. Many of the larger kinds, lying in their neat stalls, look like some glorified form of Oriental cattle. The eland, couched placidly on a bed of golden straw, with its satin-like biscuit-coloured skin gathered into soft little wrinkles at the folded joints, and its dark full eye turned to gaze mildly at the visitors, seems a type of what the domesticated antelope should be, shielded from the weather, eating artificially prepared food, lying on the straw of civilization, and dependent for its food on the stockman’s punctuality. The only creature which showed some effects of the exhilaration in the frosty air was the beautiful little Nagore antelope, the only living specimen, we believe, of this rare animal now in Europe. In form it is almost like a large gazelle, with lyre-shaped horns, a golden fawn-coloured skin, of perfectly uniform tone, set off by large and brilliant black eyes. This antelope was unusually active and friendly, standing on its slender hind feet, and reaching its head up to be caressed and fed.

In the open paddocks and runs of the smaller deer and wild-fowl, there was great good-temper and content. The Japanese deer were all curled up sleeping in the cold air round their food-box, which was filled with chopped straw, bran, and oats, and swarming with impudent Zoo sparrows. These little robbers, as also the Zoo starlings, are in such good case from the abundance of food left at their disposal by the fastidious strangers in the cages and paddocks, that, like the owls during the plagues of mice on the Pampas, they defy the weather and the seasons, and marry and bring up irregular families irrespective of the almanac. Dozens of them, as well as many of the starlings, had selected this particular cold morning of all others to take a bath. The gradually sloping drinking-pools in most of the runs, especially the tortoises’ baths, which have a wide shallow entrance, exactly suit their wants. Many were washing and splashing in the pools in the swine runs, while others were drying themselves in rows on the sunny wall above the styes, with an immense amount of fuss and vulgarly loud conversation.

The gulls were particularly noisy, and playing at a new game with bits of ice, which they picked up from the broken edges of their ponds, and let fall on the sound ice. They then scrambled and fought for the pieces as they slid on the slippery surface. One big gull swallowed a large triangular piece, which stuck for some time in its throat, and evidently gave it much discomfort until the sharp edges melted. The ravens in the crow-cages were also much pleased with the broken ice, and were busy hiding all the pieces in holes round the edges of their aviary. One of the birds was evidently not satisfied with the concealment offered by the cranny into which it had poked a large fragment, so after considering for some time, it drew it out again, rubbed it in sand till it was well covered with grit, and then pushed it back, protected by a coating of colour “adapted to environment.”

The heating of the Monkey House had been carefully looked to during the night, and beyond showing a disposition to huddle together and sleep, the common monkeys betrayed little obvious sensibility to the bright dry cold outside. But the delicate little marmosets and small tropical South American species were, with the exception of the Capuchins, removed to the warmer inner room behind the glass palace. One creature only seemed penetrated by the frost, a sleeping lemur. It was clinging to the bars of its cage, its hands grasping the rods, its two front arms stretched out, and its head, heavy with sleep, drooping between them. Yet, though steeped in slumber, it was shaken from moment to moment by spasms of shivering, its body conscious and responsive to the cold, though its drowsy brain was insensible to the warnings of physical malaise.

Winter in the Insect House is the time of incubation and sleep. All the beautiful forms of tropical moths and insects, which burst into life in the butterfly form in May, are sleeping in their pitcher-shaped cocoons, or buried in moss and mould. Only the great Goliath beetle, with a body like a well-blacked boot on which cream has been spilt, and immense stag-like horns, was alternately eating melon and sipping highly-sweetened tea, two indigestible forms of food on which it had made an almost uninterrupted meal for seven weeks.

From another point of view the demeanour of the semi-tropical birds in this sudden wave of cold was even more interesting than the power of adaptation to climate shown by so many quadrupeds. The whole pheasant tribe, perhaps the most beautiful, as a class, of any family of birds, are in the acme of plumage and condition. The Himalayas and China are the main homes of these gorgeous creatures, and we are not surprised to see in Regent’s Park the metallic lustre of the Monauls, or the scarlet, orange, and gold of the rarer Chinese varieties, in equal perfection with that attained in the glens of Nepaul, or the mountains of Pekin. But the Argus pheasant is a native of Sumatra and Borneo, the companion of the trogons and the ourang-outang; yet the cock-bird was displaying its beauties in the open air, among leaves and grass tipped with hoar-frost, and showed plumage so close and perfect, that it was impossible to doubt that the colder climate had, if possible, added a lustre to its unrivalled wealth of ornament. It is to be regretted that the eggs laid in the previous summer were not fertile, else the development of perhaps the most perfect instance of animal pattern might have received further explanation from the processes of growth in the plumage of the young. One tender nestling from the tropics was being reared at the Zoo, though not exposed to the rigour of December frost. In October 1893 a young king vulture arrived from South America—a round, fluffy ball of white down, with a smooth black head like a negro baby, and as helpless as a young pigeon. It grew rapidly, and at the time when this paper was written, was the most interesting and intelligent specimen of a young carnivorous bird that the writer has yet seen. As a rule nothing could well be more morose and forbidding than the eaglet or the young of any hawk or falcon. They are helpless, savage, and unresponsive to any form of kindness. But the young vulture is almost as tame and intelligent as a puppy. It follows its keeper in the warm house, which it shares with the tortoises, sitting down when he stops, and rising and running with a half-bird, half-quadruped gait which is irresistibly comic. When frightened or shy in the presence of strangers, it lays its head on the ground and “shams dead,” like a young plover, though almost as large as a turkey. But it soon loses all fear, and takes food or pulls at the garments of its visitors with amusing confidence. But the young vulture is an accidental visitor. The frosts of winter are mainly interesting at the Zoo as the time when the inmates exhibit the full beauty and vitality of vigorous maturity.

Note.—Since the above notes were written, the young king vulture has grown to full maturity, and is an even more interesting bird than its early promise indicated. At the end of July 1894 it was full-grown and in perfect plumage, every feather being distinct and unbroken. It is black from the crown to the legs, without a single white feather, and has none of the unpleasant appearance of the less noble vultures. So devoted is it to its keeper, that when some of the gigantic Seychelles tortoises were introduced into the large house in which it lives, it rushed at them to drive them away the moment he entered the house to feed it, and stood between him and the horny monsters, its wings wide stretched and its beak open and hissing. It still lies down to be caressed, and is in every way a very handsome and interesting bird.