The Zoological Gardens. 53

 

“Oh, papa!” he cried, after looking at
them; “no one but God could have made
them! No one else could have thought of
such shapes and feathers! How beautiful
they must look flying about, as green as the
leaves and as blue as the sky!”

There were some very small, like little
round balls of down, who were even brighter
and more carefully made than the bigger ones.
But these were not nearly all the birds. There
were a number of others, who lived alone or
with their families in little houses of their own.
Tom noticed some tall ones walking quietly
in their gardens with necks like swans, only
much longer, and with difficult names that he .
could not read. None of them had such
beautiful feathers or such ugly voices as the
parrots. He was very much astonished at
the number of different creatures that lived
in the world, for he had no idea that God had
made so many.

The poor elephants looked very shabby and
dusty, as though they had worn their skins too
long, and required new ones. ‘Tom thought