On the other side of the room are birds of paradise, who have also beautiful tails, but in quite a different style from the ostrich. They are smallish birds, but their long tails, reddish or yellowish in colour, fall like cascades or fountains of water on both sides. Ladies also wear these in their hats sometimes when they want to be very grand. Near them is one of the birds with the queerest habits of any bird. It builds a little bower or grotto, and decorates it with shells and whatever else it can pick up--it really seems to like to make it pretty; and then it runs about in and out of its bower for amusement. So it is called the bower bird. These birds live in Australia, and their bowers are made of bits of strong grass or thin stick woven over to make a sort of tunnel through which the bird can run. But the funniest thing is that they like to put bright things, such as shells or pretty stones about for decoration. We must now leave the birds, which have taught us so much, and go on to other galleries. Just across the great hall is a long gallery entirely filled with the bones and skeletons of animals which are now no longer found on earth. This does not sound attractive, but it is, almost more so than the birds we have just left, though, of course, we shall not find anything pretty here. Have you ever heard that there was a time when huge animals, larger than the largest elephant, lived and walked about on earth, not only in hot countries, but in England, too? If man lived at all in those days he must have been a poor, frightened, trembling little creature going in peril of his life from all the monsters who were around him. In England the river Thames was surrounded by a thick jungle, with mighty trees and creeping plants, like the jungles in India; and the climate was hot and steamy like the inside of a greenhouse. Here lived enormous elephants called mammoths. As we enter the gallery we see one in front of us, a monstrous creature, who makes the ordinary elephant put behind him to compare with him seem small. But larger still is the head of another behind that again. Can you even imagine a beast that could carry tusks about twelve feet long? That is to say, if two of the tallest men were laid end to end they would be as long as that elephant's tusks, and the thickness of the tusks was as great as a man's thigh. Think of all this weight! And it was resting on the head and neck of the elephant! His strength must have been like the strength of an engine. You would have been less to him than a mouse is to us. It is not only guessing that makes us say these animals lived in England, for here are the real skulls and skeletons actually found buried in the earth. Further on is what is called a sea-cow, a great fat beast weighing an enormous amount, which floated in the sea. And at the end of the room is one of the strangest of animals. Picture a creature as high as the room, standing