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

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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.