tucked round his neck, and sit back in that chair that stands over his
pond, he would look very respectably human--and he certainly wants a
shave.

[Illustration: THE BIG-BOOT DANCE.]

Toby is a low-comedy sea-lion all over. When I set about organizing the
Zoo Nigger Minstrels, Toby shall be corner-man, and do the big-boot
dance. He does it now, capitally. You have only to watch him from behind
as he proceeds along the edge of the pond, to see the big-boot dance in
all its quaint humour. Toby's hind flappers exhale broad farce at every
step. Toby is a cheerful and laughter-moving seal, and he would do
capitally in a pantomime, if he were a little less damp.

Toby is fond of music; so are most other seals. The complete scale of
the seal's preferences among the various musical instruments has not
been fixed with anything like finality; but one thing is certain--that
far and away above all the rest of the things designed to produce music
and other noises, the seal prefers the bagpipes. This taste either
proves the seal to be a better judge of music than most human beings, or
a worse one than any of the other animals, according as the gentle
reader may be a native of Scotland or of somewhere in the remainder of
the world. You may charm seals by the bagpipes just as a snake is
charmed by pipes with no bag. It has even been suggested that all the
sealing vessels leaving this country should carry bagpipes with them,
and I can see no sound objection to this course--so long as they take
all the bagpipes. I could also reconcile myself to a general extrusion
of concertinas for this useful purpose--or for any other; not to mention
barrel organs.

[Illustration: THE SEAL ROW.]

By-the-bye, on looking at Toby again I think we might do something
better for him than give him a mere part in a pantomime; his fine
moustache and his shiny hair almost point to a qualification for
managership. Nothing more is wanted--except, perhaps, a fur-trimmed coat
and a well-oiled hat--to make a very fine manager indeed, of a certain
sort.

[Illustration: A VERY FINE MANAGER.]

I don't think there is a Noah's ark seal--unless the Lowther Arcade
theology has been amended since I had a Noah's ark. As a matter of fact,
I don't see what business a seal would have in the ark, where he would
find no fish to eat, and would occupy space wanted by a more necessitous
animal who couldn't swim. At any rate, there was originally no seal in
my Noah's ark,