ABSTRACT
I remember the Museum of Natural History. It was full of still bodies, staring at you with glass eyes on which a light coating of dust was sometimes visible. Here, the wild species of the world – eagle, polecat, rat, fox, kangaroo, zebra, penguin, deer – had been upholstered, like the armchairs of suburbia. There was no sign of death having done its work on them, either by violence or decomposition; death comes to the living, and it was hard to believe these creatures had ever been alive, though here and there a special effort had been made to suggest as much. A badger half emerged from a replica of what might have been its hole, constructed from materials which fairly imitated dried mud and grass. Tall jars filled with brown liquid contained lizards, snakes and frogs, their stomachs and the vulnerable undersides of their feet exposed against the glass. The suffocating quiet emanating from these creatures gave the place something of the muffled atmosphere of suburban sitting-rooms.
