Another really beautiful house was the tropical small-birds’ house with glass roof, the centre of the hall being filled with plants, ferns, flowers, palms, and some lovely orchids. The cages contained many rare and gorgeously coloured birds from the tropics. _Spermestes mirabilis_, a little gem from Australia, took my fancy, and there were hundreds of brilliant paroquets and parrots. Taken all round, this Garden has a remarkably fine collection of animals and birds, and should rank about sixth among the Gardens in Europe. CHAPTER XXIV ZOOLOGISCHER GARTEN, POSEN, FOUNDED IN 1881: DIRECTOR, HERR JÄCKEL After entering this Garden, I passed rows and rows of chairs and little tables in front of a large restaurant, but for a long time I was unable to find any animals. However, at length I saw a small gate, through which I passed, carefully refusing to look at a notice about photographs, lest I might be able to understand what I read. The first set of cages contained jackals and an amusing pair of Himalayan bears. The next house, a very old and dilapidated one, held black, brown, and polar bears, after which came the lion house, with large outdoor cages, containing a good collection. I had just succeeded in taking photographs of a few of the inmates, when a man appeared, and, by a good deal of talk and gesticulation made me to understand that photographing the animals was not allowed; so for the third time I was obliged to close the camera shutters. There was an aquarium in a dark rockwork dungeon, but the number of fish in the tanks with cracked glass fronts was small. This dungeon seemed to contain a very miscellaneous collection; there was a stuffed ant-eater in a dark corner and some living mice in glass cases. In another glass case was a stuffed monkey, from the fur of which a tiny little mouse was busily engaged in making its nest. There were several cases of stuffed fish, a child’s perambulator, and an empty beer-bottle. That aquarium may be reckoned as one of the good old ‘has beens.’ In front of a duck-pond was a large house containing an Indian elephant, which consumed bags of bread, paper and all, with trumpets of immense delight; there was a black buck antelope with a broken horn, an inyala, also with a broken horn, an Indian tapir, a cassowary, a rhea, a pair of zebras, some kangaroos and donkeys. Opposite were wild-swine sheds, deer sheds, with a very good collection, and buffalo sheds. Next to these was a really good seal tank. There was a bird-of-prey aviary, and a monkey house, containing, amongst other animals, a beautiful black-and-white lemur. There were llama and camel sheds, a parrot and tropical small-birds’ aviary, and a burrowing-rodents’ house. Some dog-kennels contained pointers, Esquimaux dogs, a Russian wolf-hound, foxes, and wolves. In an open-air pen was a sedate marabou stork, which would catch bread thrown to it from a distance of ten yards, never allowing a single piece to touch the ground.