NINETEENTH ANNUAL REPORT 65 



THE CASE OF THE ELEPHANT, GUNDA. 



Last spring a New York newspaper elected to start in its 

 columns a sentimental war on the Director of the Zoological 

 Park with Gunda, the troublesome Indian elephant, as the casus 

 belli. By the use of cruelty stories and letters, hundreds of 

 readers were finally wrought up to a state of excitement over 

 the "tortures" of Gunda. 



A similar state of mind, among sensitive people who know 

 little about wild animals save through the newspapers, could 

 have been developed by similar methods regarding almost any 

 animal in the Zoological Park! More than this, it is reasonably 

 certain that the same methods could produce a similar state of 

 public indignation regarding the confinement, hard work, abuse 

 by employers and other sorrows in general of any clerk, cook, 

 motorman or milkman in New York. And yet, it is probable 

 that there are in this city today 100,000 persons — men, women 

 and children — who would be glad to exchange their present con- 

 dition in life for a counterpart of the conditions that regulate 

 the daily life of that storm-center elephant. 



All the world knows what a fully equipped newspaper can 

 do in creating sentiment when it applies itself to a given task 

 with unflagging industry and abundant space. A few years 

 ago the colored people of New York were very successfully 

 wrought up to a state of excitement by a shrewdly developed 

 newspaper sensation regarding Ota Benga, the African pygmy. 



The troubles of a very small portion of the public regard- 

 ing Gunda were due to ignorance of important facts in the case, 

 to persistent misrepresentation by letter-writers to "the paper," 

 and an absence of the ability to accept facts, or to reason re- 

 garding that animal. Inasmuch as we are very likely in the 

 future to have further troubles with bad elephants, and the Zoo- 

 logical Society looks to the officers of the Zoological Park to 

 render evenhanded justice both to the animals and to the keepers, 

 I deem it desirable to state now that the Park Officers do not 

 propose to be driven by ignorant public clamor, by insulting 

 letters either signed or unsigned, or by threats of any sort, from 

 doing what they regard as their plain duty in each case. 



As some members of the Society already are aware, the Di- 

 rector of the Park has enjoyed a combination of opportunities 

 for studying the minds and temperaments of elephants, both 

 wild and captive, such as perhaps no other man in America ever 



