The tapir is nothing but an ambitious pig--a pig trying to be an elephant. But the most careful cultivation has not succeeded in elongating his trunk beyond a few inches, and the biggest of the tapirs can get no nearer the stature of the elephant than a small donkey. It is probably this that makes the tapir a melancholy animal, silent and despondent. There is no gaiety in the composition of the tapir. In a fatefully unlucky moment he began to try to be an elephant, and thenceforward happiness forsook him. Like the king in the history-book, he never smiled again. His life is one cheerless, hopeless, dreary struggle to be what he can never become. Being a pig, he is obstinate, or he would have given up the attempt long ago. Elephantine ambition in particular is not born in the tapir, though ambition of a vague sort is. The young tapir always begins by trying to be a tiger or a zebra; breaking out in brilliant stripes and spots; but in due time he regularly settles down, after the manner of his kind, to achieve rank as an elephant. He is a melancholy example of discontent in humble circumstances. [Illustration: PRUDENT FINANCE.] [Illustration: RECIPROCAL CONTEMPT.] Still, there is a deal of human nature in the tapir. Plainly it is largely Hebrew human nature, notwithstanding his porcine connections. The ordinary tapir is a grave, respectable, and judicious Israelitish financier, prudent and careful; but the Malayan tapir here is a giddy young person who makes the money fly. See his short white covert coat, with the little black bob-tail visible below it, and note his vacant eye. How badly he wants a crook-handled stick and a high collar! But you may despise the tapir, his restless ambition, and his immature trunk as you please--all your contempt will be reciprocated, and with interest. He is almost the only animal here who knows that sightseers don't usually carry about with them his particular sort of food, and he is, therefore, loftily indifferent to the tenderest blandishments. He despises you for having neither trunk nor tusks; in his matured philosophy, only an elephant is admirable; as a baby, he admires the zebra and tries to be one of them. And so he lives here, in house number sixty, equidistant between the zebras and the elephants, and as likely to become one as the other. Though he could ensure his juvenile stripes being fast colours (which he cannot), the tapir would fail as a zebra in the hinder end. The docility of the zebra's head he might easily attain to--indeed, he has it now--but the inconsistent friskiness of his heels would be beyond him. [Illustration: THE DOCILE FORE.] [Illustration: THE FRISKY HIND.] [Illustration: A GALE.] [Illustration: WILDELY TAME.]