schmidt: herpetology 615 



Herpetology in Zoological Gardens 



The relations of zoological gardens with the main currents of herpetological 

 thought depend on the personalities involved. The reptile house, at every zoo, it 

 is said, is next only to the monkey house in popular interest. Thus a curator of 

 reptiles is a necessity for every zoo staff, and these are usually drawn from the 

 host of amateur snake-keepers, who, in America, replace the lizard-lovers of 

 Europe. Thus it is natural that the herpetologist at a zoo should find himself 

 involved in popular writing and, vice versa, the zoo job has an attraction for the 

 snake-keeper with a flair for newspaper writing; these relations are exemplified 

 in the career of Raymond Lee Ditmars (b. 1876, d. 1942) long curator of reptiles 

 at the Bronx Zoo of the New York Zoological Society. For twenty or more years 

 Ditmars' books were as books of the Bible to aspiring young herpetologists in the 

 United States, to the dismay of those of us who saw their grave defects — that they 

 treated herpetological knowledge as a closed book, instead of as the mere begin- 

 ning of knowledge; that they made it seem that herpetology began with Ditmars; 

 and that they encouraged the idea that the whole duty of a herpetologist lies in 

 repeating a modicum of knowledge as a kind of patter, on all possible occasions. 

 In these respects Ditmars' The Beptile Book (1907) fell far short of Miss Dicker- 

 son's Frog Book. The appearance of more serious handbooks for the young, and 

 especially of handbooks that suggest things to do and things to observe, now defi- 

 nitely relegates the Ditmars era to the past. These newer books may be listed 

 in order. For the United States, at least, it is to be hoped that they will stimulate 

 a new period of herpetological investigation, in new and varied directions, as did 

 the Erpetologie generaJe a hundred years before. 

 1933. Handbook of Frogs (3rd ed., 1949), by A. H. and A. A. Wright. 

 1937. Snakes Alive and Hoio They Live, by Clifford H. Pope. 

 1939. The Turtles of North America, by Clifford H. Pope. 

 1941. Field Book of Snakes, by Karl P. Schmidt and D. Dwight Davis. 

 1943. Handbook of Salamanders, by Sherman C. Bishop. 

 1946. Handbook of Lizards, by Hobart M. Smith. 

 1952. Handbook of Turtles, by Archie F. Carr. 



Ditmars' position in New York has been filled by a member of the new American 

 school of professionally trained herpetologists, J. A. Oliver (b. 1914), lately of 

 the American Museum and the University of Florida. 



As the London Zoo brought the much too sessile Boulenger into contact with 

 living amphibians and reptiles, the great zoo at Berlin, though never with a pro- 

 fessional herpetologist as curator, was a source of the fine photographic illustra- 

 tion of Brehm's Tierlehen. The Cairo Zoological Gardens were long in charge of 

 Major S. S. Flower, whose lifelong herpetological interests continued after his 

 retirement to England. 



American zoos have been fortunate in their strong herpetological sections. 

 Roger Conant carried much of the infiuence of the Michigan school from Toledo 

 to Philadelphia, where he continued the precedent of scientific studies set by 

 A. E. Brown. In San Diego C. B. Perkins and C. E. Shaw have made excellent 

 use in the favorable climate of Perkins' design of a reptile house, which is quite 

 as effective in San Diego as is the museum-type building, designed by Miss 

 Procter, in London and Washington. 



An American phenomenon, the so-called "Snake Farm," has grown up in 



