y as a beaver" is borne out by its
habits.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: THE TURTLE-DOVE.]

[Illustration: THE CUCKOO.]

[Illustration: THE PEACOCK.]

[Illustration: THE TAME, OR MUTE SWAN.]

[Illustration: THE LIONESS AND CUBS.]

[Illustration: THE LEOPARD.]

[Illustration: THE SYRIAN BEAR.]

[Illustration: THE JACKAL.]

LIONESS AND CUBS.

The lioness is much smaller than the lion, and her form is more slender
and graceful. She is devoid of the mane of her lord and master, and has
four or five cubs at a birth, which are all born blind. The young lions
are at first obscurely striped and spotted. They mew like cats, and are
as playful as kittens. As they get older, the uniform color is gradually
assumed. The mane appears in the males at the end of ten or twelve
months, and at the age of eighteen months it is very considerably
developed, and they begin to roar. Both in nature and in a state of
captivity the lioness is very savage as soon as she becomes a mother,
and the lion himself is then most to be dreaded, as he will then brave
almost any risk for the sake of his lioness and family.

[Illustration]

A PET JACK.

The first fish I ever saw in an aquarium, twenty years ago, was a
"Jack," as he is called when young, or a "Pike," when he grows older;
and ever since then I have contrived to have a pet one, and this, drawn
from life by Mr. Harrison Weir, is an accurate portrait of the one I now
possess in the Crystal Palace Aquarium. There he is, just as he steals
round the corner of a bit of rock. He is glaring at a minnow, at which
he is taking most accurate aim; he hardly seems to move, but yet he does
by a very trifling motion of the edge of his back fin--sometimes resting
a little on the tips of his two foremost fins, as they touch the ground,
carefully calculating his distance; and then, at the very moment when
the minnow has got into a position which leaves a space of clear water
in front, so that Mr. Jack shall not hurt his nose against any hard
substance when he gets carried on by the violence of his rush, he darts
at the minnow with the speed of Shakspeare's Puck:--

"I go, I go! look, how I go!
Swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow."
[Illustration]

THE SWALLOW'S NEST.

Often in former years the twitter of the birds glittering in the morning
sun was the first sound that met my ear during the wakeful hours which
frequently accompany illness after the worst crisi