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round
about here are always laughing at him. They say he chirps with such a
Cockney accent. He is a most amusing bird—very brave but very cheeky.
He loves nothing better than an argument, but he always ends it by
getting rude. He is a real city bird. In London he lives around St.
Paul's Cathedral. 'Cheapside,' we call him."
    "Are all these birds from the country round here?" I asked.
    "Most of them," said the Doctor. "But a few rare ones visit me every
year who ordinarily never come near England at all. For instance,
that handsome little fellow hovering over the snapdragon there, he's a
Ruby-throated Humming-bird. Comes from America. Strictly speaking, he
has no business in this climate at all. It is too cool. I make him sleep
in the kitchen at night. Then every August, about the last week of the
month, I have a Purple Bird-of-Paradise come all the way from Brazil
to see me. She is a very great swell. Hasn't arrived yet of course. And
there are a few others, foreign birds from the tropics mostly, who drop
in on me in the course of the summer months. But come, I must show you
the zoo."

The Tenth Chapter. The Private Zoo
*
    I DID not think there could be anything left in that garden which we
had not seen. But the Doctor took me by the arm and started off down a
little narrow path and after many windings and twistings and turnings
we found ourselves before a small door in a high stone wall. The Doctor
pushed it open.
    Inside was still another garden. I had expected to find cages with
animals inside them. But there were none to be seen. Instead there were
little stone houses here and there all over the garden; and each house
had a window and a door. As we walked in, many of these doors opened and
animals came running out to us evidently expecting food.
    "Haven't the doors any locks on them?" I asked the Doctor.
    "Oh yes," he said, "every door has a lock. But in my zoo the doors
open from the inside, not from the out. The locks are only there so the
animals can go and shut themselves in any time they want to get away
from the annoyance of other animals or from people who might come here.
Every animal in this zoo stays here because he likes it, not because he
is made to."
    "They all look very happy and clean," I said. "Would you mind telling me
the names of some of them?"
    "Certainly. Well now: that funny-looking thing with plates on his back,
nosing under the brick over there, is a South American armadillo. The
little chap talking to him is a Canadian woodchuck. They both live in
those holes you see at the foot of the wall. The two little beasts doing
antics in the pond are a pair of Russian minks—and that reminds me:
I must go and get them some herrings from the town before noon—it is
early-closing to-day. That animal just stepping out of his house is an
antelope, one of the smaller South African kinds. Now let us move to the
other side of those bushes there and I will show you some more."
    "Are those deer over there?" I asked.
    "DEER!" said the Doctor. "Where do you mean?"
    "Over there," I said, pointing—"nibbling the grass border of the bed.
There are two of them."
    "Oh, that," said the Doctor with a smile. "That isn't two animals:
that's one animal with two heads—the only two-headed animal in the
world. It's called the 'pushmi-pullyu.' I brought him from Africa. He's
very tame—acts as a kind of night-watchman for my zoo. He only sleeps
with one head at a time, you see very handy—the other head stays awake
all night."
    "Have you any lions or tigers?" I asked as we moved on.
    "No," said the Doctor. "It wouldn't be possible to keep them here—and
I wouldn't keep them even if I could. If I had my way, Stubbins, there
wouldn't be a single lion or tiger in captivity anywhere in the world.
They never take to it. They're never happy. They never settle down. They
are always thinking of the big countries they have left behind. You can
see it in their eyes, dreaming—dreaming always of the great open spaces
where they