Who would be a monkey in a cage set in the midst of a Bank Holiday crowd? I wouldn’t, certainly, if there were a respectable situation available as a slug in some distant flower-pot, or a lobster at the bottom of the sea. Is a monkey morally responsible for anything he may do under the provocation of a Bank Holiday crowd? Is he not rather justified in the possession of all the bonnets and ostrich feathers he can grab by way of solatium?
Bank Holiday is the dies irae of these monkeys, and then is Professor Garner avenged. The Professor shut himself in an aluminium cage, and the cage littered about Africa for some time, an object of interest to independent monkeys — a sort of free freak show.
Here the monkeys, secure in their cage, study the exterior freaks, collecting specimens of their plumage, whiskers, spectacles, and back hair. But it is hard work — and savage. It takes even a capful of monkeys a few days to recover from a Bank Holiday, and for those few days trade is slack indeed. At such times it is possible to observe the singular natural phenomenon of a monkey in a state of comparative rest. But he is more doleful than ever.
ZIG-ZAG RODOPORCINE
“RODOPORCINE” is a portmanteau-word. It is not a regular scientific term, although, as I may claim with modest pride (being its inventor), it is almost ugly enough to be one. I have invented it largely for the benefit of the building (it is only one building) which the Zoological Society numbers six and seven, and divides arbitrarily into “The Swine House” and “The Rodents’ House”; but chiefly I have invented it because I wanted a title for this Zigzag. Rodo I gnaw, porcus a pig.
The Society have old authority for any amount of confusion between the swine and the rodents. The guinea-pig has long ago established its right to its name, on the indisputable grounds of being entirely unconnected with Guinea, and not a pig, but a rodent.
The capybara is also called a water-pig (even in its Greek name) in virtue, doubtless, of being a rodent. “Porcupine” means a thorny pig; the name being again found convenient for a rodent, and enunciated with peculiar emphasis by the wag who wrote: —
Each hair will stand on end upon thy wig,. Like quills upon the frightful porcupig.
Then, by way of pleasant variation, the hedgehog derives its title from the fact of being neither a hog nor a rodent, but only a prickly kind of mole. So that confusion among pigs and rodents is an ancient, time-honoured, and respectable state of affairs, only feebly deferred to by the Zoological Society in placing the two side by side. Let us consider them, therefore, in a proper derangement and with a due regard to confusion.
The thoughtless world is disrespectful to the pig. It even uses its name as a term of reproach. Nobody likes to be called a pig, and yet if some were to accept the epithet with a good grace, and conscientiously act up to the character, there would be a deal of improvement in their manners. Proverbs abuse and slight the pig. “Pigs may whistle, but they have an ill mouth for it,” says one; “Drunk as David’s sow,” says another; “What can you expect from a pig but a grunt?” asks a third, totally ignoring the existence of such products as bacon, lard, bristles, and saddle-leather. But then proverbs are always perpetrating injustices somewhere, until abuse from a proverb has become a sort of testimonial to the worth of anything — animal, vegetable, or mineral.
The pig eats all it can get, certainly, but that is only a manifestation of what we are apt to call, in ourselves, prudence and business acumen. Once thoroughly fed it regards the world with serene apathy, but that is merely broad-mindedness and toleration.
The nearest relatives here to the familiar porker of our native agricultural show are the wild swine — European and Asiatic — well set-up creatures, of form and manner not to be considered with disrespect, and carrying with them no more of traditional piggishness than a certain easy Bohemianism of manner and irregularity of bristle.
It is plain to see that whatever may be found of ill account in the pig is due to the contaminating influence of man. A wiry, well-groomed wild pig is a decent citizen of the animal community, unpleasantly ready with his tusks, of course, but clearly dignified and with intelligence. To me the wart-hog always seems the precise militarist among pigs. His neat, well-fitting feet, his closely-clad legs, and his high carriage of head are alone enough, to say nothing of his warlike tusks, and his mutton-chop side-whiskers, which indeed are only a sort of warts, but look as much like the real thing as they can manage. But, for all the other qualities of the grizzled old soldier, it cannot be concealed that he has a drunken eye.
From the comparatively noble wild swine (who cannot open his mouth without an invariable appearance of being about to sneeze) man has, by long selection and careful breeding, evolved a preposterous cylinder of locomotive pork. This he calls an “improved” pig — as who should speak of improving the heavens by casting advertisements thereon from a magic-lantern. It is a quaint paradox in the pig-fancier’s system that the pig with the greatest number of excellent points is, as a matter of fact, the pig whose rotundity presents no point anywhere, nor anything like a point.
There is a deal of catholicity of taste in a pig. He is quite prepared to devour the whole animal and vegetable kingdom, and very little hunger would persuade him to admit the mineral kingdom, too. Almost anything will “please the pigs” — which may be the origin of the proverb, although origin-mongers say differently; and yet the pig’s senses of taste and smell are particularly acute; witness his use as a beast of chase — for the truffle. He has also an acute weather-wisdom, if countrymen’s weather-lore be accepted; for if pigs carry straw in their mouths it will inevitably rain. Wherefore picnic parties will do well to remove all straw from the reach of pigs.
The capybara — the water-pig which is no pig — is a rudimentary sort of structure. He presents a kind of rough outline or experimental draft of a quadruped in its preliminary stages of invention. All the materials are there — more than enough, in fact and the rough plan of their arrangement is sketched out, but there is no detail — nor, indeed, any other kind of tail — and no finish. The body (and a very liberal body, too), the hair (also liberal, and thick), the head and legs, have been put together tentatively with a shovel, and all the fine work has been omitted; indeed, the operations have never even arrived at the stage at which the tail is stuck on. The capybara’s ideals, notions of life, wants and aspirations are of the rudimentary character appropriate to his figure. He has no particular objection to being tame and docile so long as he is fed — nor any particular repugnance to being otherwise.
He will eat a piece of cabbage if it is there; otherwise he gets on very well with a lump of firewood. He has a drink when the idea occurs to him, and takes it in the ordinary way as a rule, but, sometimes, under the unwonted stimulus of a brilliantly new conception, he sits in his drink as he takes it.
This would appear to be his notion of humour; it is the capybara’s only joke, and he never varies it in form or spirit. He is not a communicative beast, and never offers a remark to any human creature but Church, his keeper, and then it is by way of extracting something to eat. The remark is a sort of purring rattle — the rudimentary speech of an animal whose vocal organs have not been tuned. The redeeming feature in the capybara, in these days of hysteric fad, is his utter absence of “views” on any subject in the world. And he has no enthusiasms.
The tapir is nothing but an ambitious pig — a pig trying to be an elephant. But the most careful cultivation has not succeeded in elongating his trunk beyond a few inches, and the biggest of the tapirs can get no nearer the stature of the elephant than a small donkey. It is probably this that makes the tapir a melancholy animal, silent and despondent. There is no gaiety in the composition of the tapir. In a fatefully unlucky moment he began to try to be an elephant, and thenceforward happiness forsook him. Like the king in the history-book, he never smiled again. His life is one cheerless, hopeless, dreary struggle to be what he can never become. Being a pig, he is obstinate, or he would have given up the attempt long ago. Elephantine ambition in part
icular is not born in the tapir, though ambition of a vague sort is. The young tapir always begins by trying to be a tiger or a zebra; breaking out in brilliant stripes and spots; but in due time he regularly settles down, after the manner of his kind, to achieve rank as an elephant. He is a melancholy example of discontent in humble circumstances. Still, there is a deal of human nature in the tapir. Plainly it is largely Hebrew human nature, notwithstanding his porcine connections.
The ordinary tapir is a grave, respectable, and judicious Israelitish financier, prudent and careful; but the Malayan tapir here is a giddy young person who makes the money fly. See his short white covert coat, with the little black bobtail visible below it, and note his vacant eye. How badly he wants a crook-handled stick and a high collar! But you may despise the tapir, his restless ambition, and his immature trunk as you please — all your contempt will be reciprocated, and with interest. He is almost the only animal here who knows that sightseers don’t usually carry about with them his particular sort of food, and he is, therefore, loftily indifferent to the tenderest blandishments.
He despises you for having neither trunk nor tusks; in his matured philosophy, only an elephant is admirable; as a baby, he admires the zebra and tries to be one of them. And so he lives here, in house number sixty, equidistant between the zebras and the elephants, and as likely to become one as the other. Though he could ensure his juvenile stripes being fast colours (which he cannot), the tapir would fail as a zebra in the hinder end. The docility of the zebra’s head he might easily attain to — indeed, he has it now — but the inconsistent friskiness of his heels would be beyond him.
There are a good many fine points about the porcupine. Church, the keeper, once got half a-dozen of them in his calf, and went to bed for a week to celebrate the occasion. The porcupine is one of those animals that look pleasantest from the front. There his bristles all lie back smoothly from his forehead, giving him an aspect as aesthetically and Wildely tame as may be. But behind — well, you get a view of all his fine points. A little irritation — a very little — brings up his fine points in spiky array, as though he were caught from behind in a gale of wind.
There are no Irish porcupines, which is remarkable when you consider that, in a fight, the porcupine invariably advances backward, most valorously retreating to the front in pursuit of the enemy to which he turns his back, and pressing forward courageously to the rear. That is to say, in a manner less mixed, that the porcupine always attacks an enemy by springing backward at him, with spines extended.
He has a tremendous set of teeth, like chisels, but these he never uses except to chew up timber with. He will never fight with his teeth, being apprehensive of a punch on the nose, where he is tender. But in his advance to the rear he is formidable, and wonderfully quick. I have already mentioned Church’s experience. The night is the time of the porcupines’ greatest activity, and then they are apt to fight, springing backward at one another, losing quills and tearing out specimen lumps of anatomy at a terrific rate. In the daytime the porcupine is not an active creature. He drags himself clumsily along with his armament rattling behind him, taking no more trouble than to glance at Church on the chance of a donation of the adamantine biscuits and similarly inflexible food that most delights him, and receiving disappointment or the refreshment with equal equanimity.
ZIG-ZAG BOVINE
THE ANTELOPE is bovine — in its own scientific way. It belongs to one sub-tribe of the bovina, while the respectable cow of our native dairy belongs to another; therefore, herein the antelope and the relations of the ox are spoken of together. The greatest of all the bovina in these Gardens — the Bos, in fact, if one may make a Yankee-Latin pun — is Jack, the American bison.
There is a deal of beef behind Jack’s skin, and dear beef, for here will never again be seen such another bison as Jack, and he is worth a deal of money. The bison which once paved the prairies with many miles of beef is now all but extinct — soon will be.
Jack is not as friendly as he might be. I cannot claim to have slapped jack on the back, as I have slapped many creatures that may seem wilder than any mere cattle. As a matter of sober truth, Jack is about the most dangerous brute in the place.
In the course of the preparation of this paper he has been found a disconcerting animal to sketch — if the attempt be made from the door of his residence, while he takes his walks abroad in his front garden. For he has strong opinions in the matter of trespass, and turns them over in his mind as he stalks past, afterwards communicating them to the trespasser by sundry glares of the eye, brandishings of the tail, sudden approaches of the spacious countenance, and threatening snorings; so that often the trespasser is fain to fall in with Jack’s opinions suddenly, and get out without wasting time on ceremony or picking things up.
Jack is not amiable, even to relations. It is all a matter of space. Among his other strong opinions Jack has one, especially strong, on the question of adequate breathing and exercise area for a healthy bull. Anything smaller than the space here at his disposal he regards as unhealthy for more than one animal, and is apt to maintain his opinion by indisputable demonstration. Place him with another animal in a restricted space, and you will at once perceive that the arrangement is extremely unhealthy — for the other animal. Jack puts down his head, and in a very little while his companion will probably be found dead from overcrowding. The most fatal sort of overcrowding I know of is Jack’s.
His front garden is of a size that satisfies his notions, and he willingly allows the presence of Nell, his spouse, and a calf; but if either of these ventured into his private sanctum behind, she would be overcrowded to a pulp in five minutes.
Jack’s outline — if you forget the tail — is grand, but his constant attitude of readiness to deal with a question of overcrowding gives him an air of clerkly and impartial attention, ignominiously suggestive of the Civil Service. His shaggy head, though, inclines him more to the aspect of the sham Bohemian. Still, however his appearance may strike the individual fancy, there is no doubt possible of the fact that he is for ever absorbed in profound meditation. Mere questions of air-space and overcrowding, I am convinced, affect him with only a passing interest.
In general he is pathetically brooding, with bowed head, over his nearly approaching extinction. Not that extinction is an unpleasant fate — for is it not a rare and envied dignity? But he laments that he will drag into nothingness with him the last fragments of the old joke about the Indian resolved on skinning the bison to make his wigwam, and the bison making the Indian’s wig warm without waiting to be skinned. Jack’s fore-end is by far more imposing to look at than the rest of him. He has neat, well-bred legs, and his steely muscles fill his skin well; but that skin is a threadbare piece of upholstery, and the nap only adheres in scanty patches.
I would respectfully suggest to the authorities that a new skin for Jack (of good quality and permanent nap) be included in the next estimate for repairs.
If, at the same time, the question of a new tail were considered, something would have been paid of the large debt of gratitude owing to the ox tribe for the many things — shoe-leather, horn coat-buttons, some part of what we buy for milk, ox-tail soup, beef-tea, and bull’s-eyes — that it gives to suffering humanity.
Jack really does want a new tail. He grew out of the present small fitting long ago, and now it presents a ludicrous want of balance with the opposite end. The commonest pump is better off.
The Indian buffalo, close by, is such a long-suffering and melancholy-looking cow that one immediately infers bad matrimonial experiences. She looks as though she had not yet recovered from the last connubial thrashing. Fortunately her husband is somewhere far away in Asia — and a truculent despot he probably is.
For tearfully and mournfully as his ill-used spouse regards you, it would he inadvisable to tempt her too far in the matter of overcrowding.
It is a sad and a pathetic face, but I shouldn’t like it to hit me full-butt in the stomach with all the weight
of that wealth of Bengalee cow-beef behind it.
Over in the antelope-house there is a diversity of opinion in the matter of horns. The straight, the curved, the long, the short, the regular, the barley-sugar, and the fork-lightning pattern — all have their wearers And every antelope is very serious — no antelope ever saw a joke.
They meditate and take life with the melancholy characteristic of the solitary waiter who is left here at the refreshment-rooms all the winter, to make strange visitors wonder what he is being punished for.
All but the gnus. The gnu is an animated joke in himself, and is apt to be struck by a sudden remembrance of his own absurdity, and to go tearing round his paddock enjoying the fun.
The gnu seems to have been built by way of using up odd scraps of material after the completion of the bull, the horse, and the donkey; and his fore-end and hind-end have an eternal air of never having been properly introduced to each other, and of each loudly asserting that the other is an entire stranger, like two hatters in adjoining shops with “no connection with the shop next door.”
Still, the gnu is not a creature of even temper, in this respect resembling the nylghai, whose repartee to any ill-considered joke is apt to take the form of an awkward drive in the ribs.
The nylghai is a well-groomed looking fellow, who perpetually chews the cud at double express speed, as though engaged in a perpetual match for the ruminating championship.
Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison Page 189