walk over it
every day without giving a thought to all that has happened there in
bygone times.

CHAPTER XX

THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS

If you go to the Zoological Gardens you ought to be a good walker and
not easily tired. The animals are in cages, but they are not all close
together; there are long stretches of green grass and trees and
beautiful flower-beds between, and to go over the Zoo thoroughly takes a
very long time. But it is not likely that any of you would want to know
it thoroughly; the things you want most to look at are not the curious
rare small animals or different sorts of birds, but the largest and
best-known animals, such as the lions and tigers, the bears, elephants,
and giraffes. Of all these the lions are the most interesting.

If we arrive at the Zoo a little before four o'clock in the afternoon we
ought to go straight to the lion-house, for four o'clock is the lions'
dinner-time. The house is light and warm, and the cages are all down one
side in a row. Behind them are the railed-in gardens belonging to the
beasts; but sometimes the doors between are shut, and the lions are not
allowed to walk in their gardens. On fine sunny days, however, we can
see them there outside, licking their great lips and rolling about
lazily on the warm ground. In the lion house about ten minutes to four
all the great animals begin to get restless; they walk up and down and
whine or howl, and as four o'clock draws near they get more and more
excited, some of them going round and round in circles, always quicker
and quicker. Though they have no watches, they know the time exactly,
which is rather wonderful, for there is nothing to tell them four
o'clock is near. This is their one meal in the day, so no wonder they
look forward to it; and when you see what they get, it doesn't seem much
for such a great big animal as a lion. Soon a rumbling sound is heard,
and a little truck laden with raw meat runs up through a little passage
between the cages, and the keeper pushes it along the front of the cages
to the end. Then the animals get frantic; the sight of the raw meat
makes them savage; they leap and howl--great howls that would make your
blood run cold if you heard them on a dark night when you were out in
the forest. The animal that goes round in circles goes so fast he
nearly tumbles on his head, and the others trot backwards and forwards,
and all is noise and confusion. The keeper undoes a bar at the bottom o