The Square Book of Animals. Arthur Waugh

      Friend, seek not here (to feed the mind)

      Zoology's recondite feasts:

      Here you will find but common, kind,

      And unsophisticated beasts!

      Yet fresh the life of farm and grange

      As that which o'er the ocean roams:

      Take for a change a narrower range—

      An English book for English homes!

      You swing the gate; and there he stands to greet you,

      With growl or grin, as you are strange or known:

      According to your merits will he treat you—

      An Englishman who loves and guards his own.

      Nine lives they give the common cat?

      There's a rare one livelier yet than that!

      A cat that swings nine separate tails!

      And, when it's let out of the bag, it rails

      With so knotty a tongue that the culprit quails!

      Some birds lay eggs in towering trees,