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

39 страница из 49

Mr. Hagenbeck is the Moltke of the wild animal trade. His menagerie at Chicago attracted more visitors even than the “gigantic wheel,” mainly because the creatures had more liberty and more space than they enjoy in any other “gardens”; and it is probable that he will effect a marked change in the modes of animal exhibitions now in use.

Meantime, whether in summer or winter, the Lion House is perhaps better worth seeing than any branch of the Society’s menagerie.

Few public characters are “at home” to visitors during so many hours of the day as its inmates; who might with justice enter a protest against the incivility of the public, which insists on taking the notice that “The lions will be fed at three o’clock,” as a pressing invitation to be spectators of their manners at mealtimes. Yet the economy of the Lion House so far differs from the ordinary life of the other inmates of the Zoo that, for an undiscerning public which wants excitement and has no time for observation, there is every inducement to confine its visits to a particular hour. The cattle-sheds, the Antelope House, the Monkey Palace, or the Aviaries, present much the same appearance at any time of the day. The pleasant round of comfort—eating, drinking, playing, or sleeping—goes on without variety or long cessation. But the life of the great carnivora is ordered differently, and with greater exactness. In the morning, in the Lion House, all is quiet. The animals are resting or sleeping, and the only visitors are artists or photographers, whom the lions “oblige” with a sitting at a cheaper rate than any professional models in the trade. We wonder in how many characters the old Nubian lion, “Prince,” appeared? He has striven with Hercules, carried Una, been vanquished by Samson, and shot by Nimrod. He has roared at Daniel, and eaten martyrs innumerable; and he still lives on canvas to entertain Androcles in his den, or dies, the last of his race, in the desert cavern of some artist’s fancy.