Читать книгу Life at the Zoo: Notes and Traditions of the Regent's Park Gardens онлайн

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The one hideous and repulsive creature in this good company is the great tarantula spider. It is like a long-legged, hairy crab, quite seven inches from claw to claw, with enormous brown poison fangs like a beak. Two of these spiders, discovered in a tent at Assouan, occupied by officers of the Heavy Camel Corps, put the whole of the inmates to flight in their pyjamas, and the only wonder is that they ever ventured to return before daylight. There is something strangely repulsive in this low type of life, which nevertheless makes a prey of such beautiful and highly-developed animals as humming-birds, and even the small and fragile quadrupeds of the tropical forest.

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Early in the spring of 1893, the Marquis of Hamilton brought with him from Trinidad a number of little fish, less in size than a half-grown minnow, which were presented to the Zoological Society, and were to be seen at Easter swimming in a glass bowl, among a thin growth of water weeds, in the warm chamber in which the tropical moths and butterflies are hatched.