(ARK AM) KXIIIHITION < >F ANIMALS 



mal in any case, its form and general 

 appearance may be studied; but where, 

 owing to the lack of the proper addi- 

 tions to perfect its environment, and 

 to the parsimony of space, four-fifths 

 of what it is capable of teaching stu- 

 dents of all professions, who come to 

 study it, is utterly lost. 



Much is being said and written 



case of others, the least that can be 

 said is that they present pictures of 

 daily torture, which would force a 

 protest from the lips of the Sphinx 

 of Egypt. Among the first may be 

 mentioned the beaver, the seals, the 

 otters, man}' of the wild-fowl and 

 waders, the various species of deer, 

 and numerous others ; while, as ex- 



FIG. 2. AN UNHAPPY COUGAR. 



nowadays about the conservation of 

 our natural resources, which include 

 our fisheries, birds, game, and the 

 rest ; but the questions raised in the 

 present article have been, as a rule, 

 almost entirely ignored. Thousands 

 of people resort to our National Zoo- 

 logical Park annually ; a certain per- 

 centage of them are students in vari- 

 ous professional lines ; many come 

 from abroad to study our animals 

 there, and it makes a vast difference 

 whether such students find the ani- 

 mals they desire to study penned up 

 in box-like cages ; confined to courts 

 and dens of rocks by a caging of iron 

 bars — the whole having the appear- 

 ance of some gigantic rat-trap — or 

 whether those animals occupy quar- 

 ters where not only their form and ap- 

 pearance may be studied, but as many 

 of their habits as possible. 



Some of the conditions under which 

 the mammals and birds are confined 

 at our National Zoological Park are, in 

 all particulars, simply beyond the pale 

 of any adverse criticism ; while in the 



emplifying those in the second class, 

 there may be named the bears, the 

 majority of the mammals in the row 

 of cheap cage-boxes shown in one of 

 the illustrations, the condor, and al- 

 together too many others in one of the 

 mammal-houses. 



It is to be hoped that Congress will 

 soon make far more generous appro- 

 priation for the maintenance of this 

 magnificent national institution in 

 each and all of its departments. It 

 is many a year now since its estab- 

 lishment ; surely it is about time that 

 it was raised to a level coequal with 

 the plane to which American pride 

 usually rises in such matters, and not 

 remain, through an overcautious gov- 

 ernmental economy, at the stage oc- 

 cupied by some modest "zoo" of the 

 provinces. 



But the verities of human life, the 

 common experience of love, sorrow, 

 hope, faith, action, religion, these do 

 not change. — Dr. David Starr Jordan 

 in "The Stability of Truth." 



