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ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 



ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BUL LETIN 



EDITED BY THE DIRECTOR 

 Elwin R. Sanborn, Asst. Editor 



Published Quarterly at the OfHce of the Society, ii Wall St., 



New York City. 



Copyright, I()nj, by the New York Zoological Socicry. 



0Uittri of tf)c ^otietp. 



^resibtnt : 



HON. LEVI P. MURTON. 



(Executtbe Committee : 



Charles T. Barney, Chairman, 

 Henry Fairfield Osborn, Samuel Thorne, 



John S. Barnes, Madison Grant, 



Percy R. Pyne, William White Niles, 



Levi P. Morton, ex-ofUcio, 



&mtxai. ©lliuxs : 



Secretary, Madison Grant, ii Wall Street. 

 Treasurer, Percy R. Pyne, 52 Wall Street. 

 Director, William T. Hornaday, Zoological Park. 

 Director of the .-iquarium. Charles H. Townsend, Battery Par 



^oarb of Jflanagcrs : 



EX-OFFICIO, 

 I of New York. Hon. George B. McClellan 

 Dep't of Parks, Hon. Moses Herrmai 



Clasg of IdOS. Class of 1909. 



Henrv F. Osborn. Levi P. Murlon. 



Andrew Carnegie. 



Class! of 1907. 



F. Augustus Schermerhc 



George < 

 Cleveland H. Dodge. 

 C. Ledyard Blair. 

 Cornelius Vanderbilt, 

 Nelson Robinson, 

 Frederick G. Bourne, 



Hugh D. Auchincloss. 



George F. Baker, 

 GcantB.. Schley, 

 Payne Whitney, 



[nlin S. Barnes, 

 Madison Grant, 

 William White NiU 

 Samuel Thorne. 

 Henry A. C. Tayloi 



AS OTHERS' SEE US, 



In view of the studious inan'ner in which 

 EngHsh naturalists are now comparing and 

 criticizing the zoological gardens of Europe, a 

 recent critique on the New York Zoological 

 Park is of special interest. Since the appearance 

 of a noteworthy volume by C. V. A. Peel, en- 

 titled 'The Zoological Gardens of Europe," and 

 a later survey by Capt. S. S. Flower, director 

 of the Cairo Zoological Garden, some American 

 zoologists have regretted the fact that their 

 vivaria were not being considered and criticized 

 with those of Europe. 



Air. F. G. Aflalo, a very competent critic, re- 

 cently visited the Zoological Park, and in the 

 London Outlook there has appeared an article 

 by him, which we reproduce entire in this issue. 

 We have no doubt that the members of the 

 Zoological Society will be interested in the 

 opinions of a man who is a critical naturalist, 

 and also a prominent and loyal member of the 

 Zoological Society of London. Mr. Aflalo has 

 written several very interesting books, one of 

 which is entitled "A Walk Through the (Lon- 

 don) Zoological Gardens." m. g. 



THE NEW YORK ZOO. 



By F. G. Aflalo, F.Z.S. 

 From tlie London Outlook. 



NOT more than fifteen or twenty miles 

 can lie between Bronx and the Bowery. 

 You cover the distance for a five-cent 

 fare on the up-town subway, which takes you 

 out 10 the West Farms terminus, as my recol- 

 lection goes, in less than the hour ; but so brief 

 a journey is a link between one of man's most 

 crowded hives and a replica of the wild, with 

 an ibex at gaze on the skyline, a herd of buffalo 

 lying in the snow, a bear playing hide-and-seek 

 behind a boulder. Within the two hundred and 

 fifty acres of land and water comprised in the 

 lironx Zoological Park the visitor finds at once 

 the expression of American ideals and the re- 

 proach of European Zoos. 



Perspective, immensity, a middle distance 

 that would measure the furthest limit of Old 

 World menageries, to which it is as New 

 York's flatiron buildings to mud hovels in Con- 

 nemara ; these are the keynote of Bronx. It 

 owes its present achievement and its yet greater 

 promise to its freedom from the trammels of 

 tradition and immunity from the handicap of 

 obsolete ideals of architecture, as well as to 

 that liberal policy of progress which is the com- 

 fortable equation of public subsidy and private 

 generosity. Multi-millionaires among its 

 founders put their hands in their pockets when- 

 ever some unusually expensive alteration is im- 

 perative, for New York is a city in which the 

 man who is not in want of it has only to ask for 

 money and it pours into his lap. If Washing- 

 ton had control of such funds, its more beau- 

 tiful park might prove a dangerous rival, but 

 outside of that continent I doubt if Bronx will 

 ever have its peer. If Mr. Hornaday's life's 

 work is to be eclipsed, it will be by one of his 

 own countrymen. 



Granite ridges, scraped bare at their summits 

 by early glacial action, run north and south 

 over most of the area between East i82d Street 

 and Pelham Avenue. It is wild Nature, so cun- 

 ningly adapted to the semi-artificial require- 

 ments of a menagerie that the eye of the casual 

 visitor without any special knowledge of such 

 operations will have some difficulty in discrim- 

 inating between the original landscape and the 

 work of the Director. As recently as three 

 vears ago, for instance, what is now a pond for 

 aquatic mammals was a moving peat-bog, and 

 other bogs have with equal skill been trans- 

 formed into useful ponds that gleam in setting 

 of gneiss, quartz, and granite. In no orthodox 

 "Zoo" should we look for the wild effect of the 



