344 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



clean as the model nurseries of tlie Faubourg St.-Martin. Real- 

 izing the disadvantage of a man-ape being alone, the directors of 

 the Zoo had even contrived to get him a helpmeet of his own 

 tribe and age. A wire screen prevented the introduction of 

 improper comestibles a paradise exempted from the temptation 

 of forbidden fruit. 



But the beneiit of all these arrangements was neutralized by 

 the same mistake that has doomed millions of city children to a 

 consumptive's grave an excess of precaution in the exclusion of 

 cool air currents. The entire cage had been inclosed with double 

 sheets of plate glass. 



Warm air was introduced by means of register pipes, and a 

 small aperture at the top of the cage established communication 

 with the atmosphere of a hall, which in its turn was roofed and 

 artificially warmed, thus enabling the warden to keep the temper- 

 ature of the ape prison in a state of uniformity far exceeding 

 that of the equatorial regions. In the forests of the lower Congo 

 the thermal extremes range from 105 F. at 2 P. M. to 55 after a 

 midnight rainstorm, a difference of fifty degrees, but an apparent 

 contrast (allowing for the sudden transition from brooding heat 

 to the blasts of a drenching gale) of something more like eighty 

 degrees. 



From October to June, Mr. Rooney's glass house was rarely 

 permitted to get colder than G0, the average being about 75 and 

 the maximum 80. In midsummer it got, of course, much warmer, 

 but the supposed delicate constitution of the guest from the 

 tropics was made an argument against every proposition to let 

 him share the romps of his fellow fourhanders in the open-air 

 extension of their cages. 



At the time of his arrival at the Zoo, Mr. Rooney attested 

 the soundness of his lungs by gymnastic exploits rarely rivaled 

 outside of a Japanese circus, and seemed indeed almost insen- 

 sible to fatigue. With one hand, or the finger tips of both 

 hands, clutching the horizontal bar, he would whirl around in a 

 circle till the spectators got dizzy in watching his evolutions. 

 He would turn somersaults all around the walls of his gymna- 

 sium, rising higher and higher with every turn, till a climax 

 swing landed him on top of his trapeze, where he would squat 

 with his arms akimbo and with tightly compressed lips, sug- 

 gesting abundant reserve stores of air in his capacious chest. 



But at the end of the third year it was noticed that the self- 

 taught acrobat was getting less active, and about the middle of 

 last summer it could no longer be doubted that his health had 

 been affected in some way or other. His appetite became capri- 

 cious ; there were days when he contented himself with nibbling 

 small samples of his dinner, though an hour later he was apt to 



