1910.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 261 



the position of the managers of other Zoological Gardens that drugs 

 are of but small avail in treating the ailments of lower animals and 

 records it as his experience as Prosector that the principal causes of 

 deaths during the first six months of the existence of the Garden were 

 improper food, badly regulated temperature and ill constructed 

 cages. He attributes the greatly improved conditions to the effects 

 of common sense hygienic treatment, the result of careful attention 

 and watchfulness on the part of those having charge of the animals. 

 He then enumerates the causes of death of 74 of the 113 animals lost 

 during the year, intimating that the others were old and in poor 

 condition when received and that they had gradually wasted away, 

 this being more especially the case with the birds. It is evident that 

 he took a deep interest in the condition of the Garden and that he 

 was not sparing of labor to advance its prosperity. 



He became a Director of the Society April 28, 1881, served as 

 Secretary in 1884 and as Corresponding Secretary from Nov. 24, 1890 

 to Nov. 10, 1904. 



From other sources he obtained the material for his elaborate 

 studies of the Gorilla, the Hippopotamus, the Galeopithecus and the 

 Hyrax. 



As a contribution to the eighth volume of the quarto Journal of 

 the Academy, he published in 1881 his account of the placenta and 

 generative apparatus of an elephant belonging to Cooper and Bailey's 

 London Circus, then occupying winter quarters at 23d Street and 

 Ridge Avenue in this city. A young female had been born at 2.30 

 A.M., March 9, 1880. The period of gestation was fixed at from 

 650 to 655 days, another corroboration by modern research of the 

 statements of that accurate observer, Aristotle. This was the first 

 circumstantial account of the pregnancy and delivery of an elephant 

 and the article excited wide interest. It is, with the article on the 

 placentation of the Kangaroo, published in the Proceedings of the 

 Academy for 1881, the author's most important contribution to 

 original research. 3 



3 "The observations of Prof. Chapman of America show that these bags 

 [the yolk sacs and allantois] are all present in the Kangaroo, but that they are 

 all small and arrested." W. Kitchen Parker On Mammalian Descent, p. 61. 



Referring again to Dr. Chapman's paper "On the Embryo of the Kangaroo," 

 and to one by Dr. Osborn on the same subject, Prof. Parker remarks: "The two 

 papers just mentioned might, literally, be folded up and packed inside a nut-shell; 

 and yet, if I am not greatly mistaken, they let in more light upon the incoming of 

 both the Metatheria and the Eutheria than anything that has gone before. 



" Of course, only the biological reader of such communications can value them 

 properly, as he only can thoroughly understand their meaning and their bearing; 

 and yet the patient and thoughtful general reader may come at the gist of the 

 matter." Parker, op. cit. p. 83. 



