NEW ANIMALS AT THE ZOO.
"AB Africa, Beeves non i aliquid "—always something fresh from Africa—is as true of records of the Zoo as it was of the annals of Rome. That continent has provided the greater number of interesting arrivals during the past six months in the Society's Gardens. Besides the giraffe and the sable antelopes, South Africa has now contributed the klipspringer, the dwarf chamois of the southern mountains, and West Africa a gorilla, from the French Congo. The other arrivals of mark are the manatee from the Amazons, and a pair of very curious, but singularly unpleasant, young king-penguins, which, as Herodotne might say, 'have the beak indeed of birds, but the hair of beasts and the odour of fish.' In this brief list chance has brought together three mammals which might well be chosen as extreme types of animal form,—the gorilla, of repulsive ugliness ; the klip- springer, of the perfection of grace and beauty, for it is not only more elegant than the gazelle, but has a coat the colour of the plumage of a golden plover, and eyes as black, and even larger in proportion than those of that night-feeding bird ; and the manatee, as exhibiting the apparent, though not the real, absence of any form or plastic design.
The new gorilla, which is a young female not more than quarter grown, is by no means so ugly as might
be expected. Her appearance almost suggests a doubt whether the gorilla is as hideous as he is painted,— or rather as he is stuffed. The artist who "sets up" a specimen has, as a rule, only verbal descriptions to guide him, and those which were first current about the appearance of the gorilla were the highly coloured accounts of M. Du Chailln. A gorilla-skin usually arrives turned neatly inside out, and made into a bag in which the animal's skull and bones are packed. Hence the expression of the animal when stuffed depends very largely on the fancy of the artist. Fashion has decided that male gorillas shall be stuffed drawing back their lips and showing a row of very hideous teeth, used mainly for the pacific purpose of eating tropical fruits. But unless irritated the teeth are covered by the lips, which are large and flexible, as in the chimpanzee. Its positive deformity, from the human point of view, consists in the huge develop- ment of the muscles of the back, fastened by necessity to enlarged "processes" of the vertebrm, and of the ridges of the skull, and the capacious stomach, which an unsatisfying diet of vegetables requires, and for want of which Mr. Stanley's Zanzibari porters, when travelling through the Congo forest, and living on the gorilla's food of plantains, suffered in a manner which will not be forgotten by readers of that unpleasing history of travel. The gorilla's method of climb- ing, with the knuckles turned towards him, as a platform- orator grasps the rail of the dais, makes these great back- muscles a necessity ; but in the young animal neither these nor the ridges of the skull are developed. The Zoo gorilla is a round-headed, flat-backed, and entirely pleasant-looking creature, far superior in appearance to the chimpanzee, though it has the dark, round, melancholy eye common to all the larger apes. If it lives it will probably develop as great intelligence as Sally,' and it already shows the dis- position to strong affection for its keeper which makes the " education " of these animals possible, and their trans- ference to different menageries a matter of difficulty, the creatures often refusing food and dying from sheer sorrow at the loss of their daily attendant and companion.
There could scarcely be a wider severance between mam- malian creatures than that between the gorilla and the manatee. Yet human fancy for centuries converted the manatee into a sea-maiden, while it was left to Ila.nno the Carthaginian and the negroes of the Gaboon to claim that the gorilla was a " relapsed " man. Hanno, though he asserted that they were men, was severely practical, for he skinned his specimens and put them into the natural history museum at Carthage. Our discoverers were also practical, for, though they told pretty stories of the "sirens" and mermaids, they ate the rarest until there were none left for science to describe. There are only two species of the " sirens " left, though a century and a half ago a third was discovered by Steller, who accompanied Behring in his voyage to Behring Sea and Kamstchatka. Steller gave an account of the animal. It was far larger than the surviving species, from 20 ft. to 28 ft. long, and with a head disproportionately small. Its tail was forked, and had a fin at the extremity, unlike that of the manatee, which is shaped almost exactly like that of a beaver, into a broad-flattish paddle. Their most remarkable aharacteristic was their affection for each other, and their fondness for their young. Though dull and stupid in other respects, they would not desert their mates when these were attacked and killed by the sailors, and nursed their young with great care and attention. They also were easily tamed, and allowed themselves to be handled. Neither of these attributes would readily be suspected in a creature which was by all accounts only a larger edition of the existing manatees and dugongs, which are to all appearance more sluggish than a carp, and the most shapeless, jelly-like, lumpy, and mind- less of existing mammals. Yet the manatee has far more emotion and intelligence than its appearance warrants us in supposing. The intense maternal affection" both of this species and the dugong have been noted by most naturalists, and they are readily tamed. An American manatee was kept by a Spanish Colonial Governor for twenty-six years, and though not so intelligent as a seal, it became equally tame, and would allow boys to mount on its back when it swam.
The great manatee of the &bring Sea became extinct in 1768, twenty-seven years after its diecovery. Steller had recommended it as choice food very easily procured, to other intending navigators. These did not neglect the hints, and treated "Steller's sea-cow" just as they did the great auks on Funk Island. This would not have mattered had the "sea-cow" been as widely distributed as the manatee or the dugong, the former of which is found along the whole West coast of Africa, and up the great rivers as far as lake Tchad, in Florida, Guiana, Jamaica, and the Amazons, and the dugong from the Red Sea and East African coast east- ward, to the coast of West Australia. But the "sea-cow" was one of those curious but not unfrequent examples of a species limited to a single small area. It was only found on Behring's Island off the coast of Kamstchatka, and when this one colony was destroyed the race perished.
Though the manatee is so common an animal, it is not often brought to England. The records of the Zoo show that pre- viously two were brought to England, one from Surinam, and another from Porto Rico. This was in the early days of the Zoo when a "policy of enterprise" was in favour with the Society, who not uncommonly sent their own servants or managers to distant lands to capture and bring home wild animals. Mr. Clarence Bartlett was sent to Surinam to find a manatee. One was soon discovered, an unweaned infant, which had been captured by Indians and was kept in a pond. The origin of the persistent stories of the mermaids nursing their babies-in- arms was illustrated by the behaviour of this little creature, for though apparently fitted with a fish's tail, and living mainly under water, it would drink nothing but milk out of a bottle. Mr. Bartlett used to wade into the water and induce it to come to the bank. Then seating himself, with his knees in the water, he would get the young manatee to lie, half a-wash, across his knee and suck its bottle of cow's milk. The manatee now in the collection lives mainly upon lettuce. leaves dropped into the tank. Though its eyes are apparently only half-developed bleared organs, not larger than a pea, it is quite on the alert, and forges gently forward, rising to its food like a Thames chub rising to a bee. The method of taking food is, however, far more complicated than that of any mammal, except the elephant or the ant-eater. It has a double pair of lips, the outer ones closing completely over the inner pair, which again cover the plates which act as teeth. When taking floating food these grey, gutta-percha-like outer lips open, not across, but horizontally, and are extended like a short tulip, shaped tube. By them the food is sucked in past the second pair of lips and then chewed by the bony plates of the jaws and swallowed. This contribution to the history of the manatee was first made by Professor G-arrod, the late prosector of the Zoo, after observing the habits of the animal obtained by Mr. Bartlett, and can be verified by any visitor who watches the creature now in the collection.
The sable antelopes, perhaps the finest creatures of their tribe ever seen at the Zoo, and the giraffe which was imported at the same time, promise to remain for years as ornaments to the collection. But the giraffe needs a companion. It cannot wash its own neck, and though every other part of its coat is clean and glossy, this, its most characteristic feature, still bears the soil of travel. The giraffes, by a social compact, wash each other's necks, or rather lick them clean; and unless the Zoological Society supplies the keepers with a long mop and hot water, the full beauty of the solitary giraffe's coat will never be displayed.
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