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THE WHITE TIGERS

I visited the Zoo for one purpose alone - to see the famous white tigers that were advertised everywhere in town.

The town was Bristol. It lies on the estuary of the River Severn, which protects Wales from the clutch of England's West Country. The town is famous, primarily, as a port where tall ships in days past brought home prize sherry from the bodegas of Spain, and where the merchants made Bristol Cream more famous as a Bristol sherry than the wine from Cadiz that it really was. The Bristolian salesmen were doing it again. Their advertised white tigers appeared to have little connection with their home in India, especially since they had just given birth to a white tiger cub - one of the first born outside of India. "Come and see Bristol's White Tigers."

It was a beautiful sunny day. I walked along the path between rows of spring flowers edging immaculate lawns. Everyone was moving in the same direction, hurrying past the wildebeest, the saurian cages, and even the rest of the cats. The white tigers were the attraction of the day, and there was a hum of expectancy in the crowd. Even the children seemed better behaved and willing to walk quickly alongside Dad.

The traditional tigers' cages had been done away with for these cats. Instead, there was a plate of extra thick glass designed to give a fuller view of the occupants of the enclosure, and still provide the protection needed. Unfortunately, while doing away with the bars, there had been no attempt to increase the size of the "cage". Inside the glass there was still a small bare room with a couple of sleeping ledges and the obligatory tree branches lodged obliquely from wall to wall. There had been some attempt to grow ferns at the back of the cage - an attempt to provide a synthetic jungle.

In the "cage", full in view through the plate glass, were two white tigers, a male and a female. The female was lying at the back with a small cub sleeping against its neck. You could barely see that it was there. The male was standing looking back at the crowd of staring zoo patrons outside the glass. Whether it knew of the glass, and its strength, was not obvious. It clearly was totally apathetic to the crowd. It turned and started to pace across the front of the enclosure between its mate and the glass. Backwards and forwards it walked, totally oblivious to the crowd's attempts to interest him. He was regal, not in the glowing gold of a tiger as we know them, but in a strange off-white sheen, as if

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