690 SOME PRIVATE ZOOS. 



concerns itself with such operations is, if we except the more or less 

 private undertakings of more than one reigning sov^ereign, that of 

 America, in which the game and fisheries departments of the chief 

 States devote considerable sums of money to the introduction of suit- 

 able game beasts and birds. 



Private enterprise takes with us the place of public usefulness, and 

 we thus have in our midst a number of sportsmen and naturalists who 

 extend their protection to foreign animals, and spend their money in 

 giving them every chance of doing well amid their new surroundings. 

 I have chosen four of these zoos, situated in widely different parts 

 of the countr}^ to illustrate some points of interest in the man- 

 agement of such establishments, and all of these I have visited per- 

 sonally. My scheme does not include the aforementioned preserve of 

 Woburn, nor have I seen the famous Japanese deer at Powerscourt, 

 where Viscount Powerscourt was the first to acclimatize that graceful 

 species as a park animal. At the same time, 1 think it may be shown 

 that these four animal sanctuaries — they are Tring, Vaynol, Haggers- 

 ton, and Leonardslee — on the resources of which I have drawn for 

 these notes, have succeeded under sufficiently marked differences of 

 soil, climate, and situation to encourage anyone who may contemplate 

 establishing yet another reserve in no matter what district of England. 

 Each of them has its prominent feature, and in each there is some lack 

 that we find supplied in one or other of the rest. 



I suppose that of all four Leonardslee comes nearest to the ideal for 

 the purpose. Sheltered by the South Downs its sandy soil throws up 

 a luxuriance of flowering shrubs and appears to favor all manner of 

 foreign trees, no matter whence Sir Edmund Loder brought them in 

 the seed. Its hilly tracts are in parts so wild that London might well 

 be 400, instead of merely 40, miles away. Its climate is more equable 

 than would be expected so near the home counties; and the higher 

 portions of the estate are bracing, while the lower hold an abundant 

 supply of water that not even the caprices of its famous beavers can 

 divert. 



Touching Tring, there is, I think, nothing of extreme importance to 

 be noted with reference to its climate or situation; but Vaynol and 

 Haggerston present diametrically opposite physical conditions, their 

 onl}^ drawback in common being, perhaps, a too heavy rainfall in the 

 wet season. While the latter lies between the imposing slopes of 

 Snowdon and the Menai Strait, amid scenery of great variety, and in 

 a soft western climate, the more northerly estate is on the lowlands of 

 the Northumbrian coast, exposed to every cold and violent wind that 

 blows across the neighboring North Sea, while equalh^ bitter winds 

 reach it from the southwest, straight from the Cheviot Hills, that are 

 often snow clad until early suumier. 



The feature of the Hon. Walter Rothschild's collection at Tring is. 



