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The Hippopotamus.

"OH, say, what is this fearful, wild
In-cor-ri-gible cuss?"
"This _crea-ture_ (don't say 'cuss,' my child;
'T is slang)—this crea-ture fierce is styled The Hip-po-pot-am-us.
His curious name de-rives its source
From two Greek words: _hippos_—a horse,
_Potamos_—river. See?
The river's plain e-nough, of course;
But why they called that thing a horse,
That's what is Greek to me."

The Fly.

OB-SERVE, my child, the House-hold Fly,
With his ex-traor-di-na-ry eye:
What-ev-er thing he may be-hold
Is mul-ti-plied a thou-sand-fold.
_We_ do not need a com-plex eye
When we ob-serve the Household Fly:
He is so vol-a-tile that he
In _ev-ery_ place at once can be;
He is the buzz-ing in-car-na-tion
Of an-i-mate mul-ti-pli-ca-tion.
Ah! chil-dren, who can tell the Why
And Where-fore of the House-hold Fly?

The Mongoos.

THIS, Chil-dren, is the famed Mon-goos.
He has an ap-pe-tite ab-struse;
Strange to re-late, this crea-ture takes
A cu-ri-ous joy in eat-ing snakes—
All kinds, though, it must be con-fessed,
He likes the poi-son-ous ones the best.
From him we learn how ve-ry small
A thing can bring a-bout a Fall.
Oh, Mon-goos, where were you that day
When Mis-tress Eve was led a-stray?
If you'd but seen the ser-pent first,
Our Parents would not have been cursed,
And so there would be no ex-cuse
For MIL-TON, but for you—Mon-goos!

The Platypus.

MY child, the Duck-billed Plat-y-pus
A sad ex-am-ple sets for us:
From him we learn how In-de-ci-sion
Of char-ac-ter pro-vokes De-ri-sion.
This vac-il-lat-ing Thing, you see,
Could not de-cide which he would be,
Fish, Flesh, or Fowl, and chose all three.
The sci-en-tists were sore-ly vexed
To clas-si-fy him; so per-plexed
Their brains that they, with Rage at bay,
Called him a hor-rid name one day,—
A name that baf-fles, frights, and shocks us,—
Or-ni-tho-rhyn-chus Par-a-dox-us.

The Chimpanzee.

CHIL-DREN, be-hold the Chim-pan-zee:
He sits on the