782 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS : THEIR USES AND MANAGE- 

 MENT. 



By E. W. SHUFELDT, M. D., C. M. Z. S. 



RARELY has it been in the history of the world that a city 

 which has become famous as a scientific and literary cen- 

 ter has not, sooner or later, inaugurated, developed, and main- 

 tained its collection of living wild animals, its zoological gardens. 

 Indeed, in modern times, as of old, in large civilized communities, 

 it has come to be where such establishments are in existence, and 

 kept up to a high state of perfection and growth, that they are 

 the very badge denoting the presence of marked intellectual 

 activity along the lines we have indicated. With respect to the 

 instances of this in history, they are too well known to the gen- 

 eral reader to require enumeration here, while we are all familiar 

 with the names of those cities of our own day wherein such insti- 

 tutions are now flourishing. 



In modern times, again, the enormous impulse which the bio- 

 logical sciences have received, the far keener appreciation on the 

 part of the reading public in such matters ; and the pressing ne- 

 cessity for such material as zoological gardens can alone supply 

 the morphologist, artist, and animal historian, are, we must be- 

 lieve, the principal forces that eventually give birth to these col- 

 lections. 



The uses of a zoological garden to a civilized country are mani- 

 fold, and not easily to be overestimated. These uses are con- 

 siderably enhanced if it is established within easy access of large 

 biological museums and libraries. Sometimes it so happens, how- 

 ever, that in a large city where zoological gardens, museums, and 

 libraries exist, the former may be situated several miles from the 

 last two mentioned, and this is the misfortune to which we more 

 particularly refer, and, if it can be avoided, should be by all 

 means. 



If properly conducted, a zoological garden sees its chief use in 

 being a powerful auxiliary to those more general schemes under- 

 taken on the part of the state for the benefit of the community at 

 large, in which educational ends are to be met. And in the man- 

 agement of such a garden, everything connected with it should 

 be continually bent in that direction ; the managers should ever 

 keep clearly before their minds this fact, that the principal object 

 they have in view is an educational one — that they have under 

 their control an engine capable of diffusing annually among the 

 people an incalculable store of highly useful knowledge. The 

 moment that such an institution sinks to the level of a purpose- 



