winks his red eyes, balances himself afresh
on his bandy forelegs, and becomes a spectacle
of dejection. He is as little like his vagabond
self, as that remarkable breed which the
French call a bouledogue.

Your birds (says our friend, resuming his
work, and addressing himself again to the
Zoological Society), are as happy as the day is—he
was about to add, long, but glances at the
light and substitutes—short. Their natural
habits are perfectly understood, their structure
is well-considered, and they have nothing
to desire. Pass from your birds to those
members of your collection whom Mr. Rogers
used to call, "our poor relations." Of course
I mean the monkeys. They have an artificial
climate carefully prepared for them. They
have the blessing of congenial society
carefully secured to them. They are among their
own tribes and connexions. They have shelves
to skip upon, and pigeon-holes to creep into.
Graceful ropes dangle from the upper beams
of their sitting-rooms, by which they swing,
for their own enjoyment, the fascination of
the fair sex, and the instruction of the
enquiring minds of the rising generation. Pass
from our poor relations to that beast, the
Hippopotamus—What do you mean?

The last enquiry is addressed, not to the
Zoological Society, but to the Bulldog, who
has deserted his position, and is sneaking
away. Passing his brush into the left thumb
on which he holds his palette, our friend
leisurely walks up to the Bulldog, and slaps
his face! Even we, whose faith, is great,
expect to see him next moment with the
Bulldog hanging on to his nose; but, the
Bulldog is abjectly polite, and would even
wag his tail if it had not been bitten off in
his infancy.

Pass, I was saying (coolly pursues our
friend at his easel again), from our poor
relations to that impersonation of sensuality, the
Hippopotamus. How do you provide for
him? Could he find, on the banks of the
Nile, such a villa as you have built for him
on the banks of the Regent's canal? Could
he find, in his native Egypt, an appropriately
furnished drawing-room, study, bath, wash-
house, and spacious pleasure-ground, all en
suite, and always ready? I think not. Now,
I beseech your managing committee and your
natural philosophers, to come with me and
look at the Lions.

Here, our friend seizes a piece of charcoal
and instantly produces, on a new canvas
standing on another easel near, a noble Lion
and Lioness. The Bulldog (who deferentially
resumed his position after having his face
slapped), looks on in manifest uneasiness,
lest this new proceeding should have
something to do with him.

There! says our friend, throwing the
charcoal away, There they are! The majestic
King and Queen of quadrupeds. The British
Lion is no longer a fictitious creature in the
British coat of arms. You produce your
British Lion every year from this royal
couple. And how, with all the vast amount
of resources, knowledge, and experience at
your command, how do you treat these your
great attractions? From day to day, I find
the noble creatures patiently wearing out
their weary lives in narrow spaces where
they have hardly room to turn, and
condemned to face in the roughest weather a
bitter Nor'-Westerly aspect. Look at those
wonderfully-constructed feet, with their
exquisite machinery for alighting from springs
and leaps. What do you conceive to be the
kind of ground to which those feet are, in the
great foresight of Nature, least adapted?
Bare, smooth, hard boards, perhaps, like the
deck of a ship? Yes. A strange reason
why you should choose that and no other
flooring for their dens!

Why, Heaven preserve us! (cries our
friend, frightning the Bulldog very much) do
any of you keep a cat? Will any of you do me
the favour to watch a cat in a field or garden,
on a bright sunshiny day—how she crouches
in the mould, rolls in the sand, basks in the
grass, delights to vary the surface upon
which she rests, and change the form of the
substance upon which she takes her ease.
Compare such surfaces and substances with
the one uniform, unyielding, unnatural,
unelastic, inappropriate piece of human
carpentery upon which these beautiful animals,
with their vexed faces, pace and repace, and
pass each other two hundred and fifty times
an hour.

It is really incomprehensible (our friend
proceeds), in you who should be so well
acquainted with animals, to call these boards
—or that other uncomfortable boarded object
like a Mangle with the inside taken out—a
Bed, for creatures with these limbs and these
habits. That, a Bed for a Lion and Lioness,
which does not even give them a chance of
being bruised in a new place? Learn of your
cat again, and see how she goes to bed. Did
you ever find her, or any living creature, go
to bed, without re-arranging to the whim and
sensation of the moment, the materials of the
bed itself? Don't you, the Zoological Society,
punch and poke your pillows, and settle into
suitable places in your beds? Consider then,
what the discomfort of these magnificent
brutes must be, to whom you leave no diversity
of choice, no power of new arrangement, and
as to whose unchanging and unyielding beds
you begin with a form and substance that have
no parallel in their natural lives. If you
doubt the pain they must endure, go to
museums and colleges where the bones of lions
and other animals of the feline tribe
who have lived in captivity under similar
circumstances, are preserved; and you
will find them thickly encrusted with a
granulated substance, the result of long lying
upon unnatural and uncomfortable planes.

I will not be so pressing as to the feeding
of my Royal Friends (pursues the Master), but