REPORT OF THE 
DIRECTOR OF THE ZOOLOGICAL PARK 
TO THE BOARD OF MANAGERS. 

QO* all the institutions for objective education, none are more 
sensitive to the vicissitudes of war than zoological parks. 
The permanence of museum and art exhibits are at once the envy 
and the despair of vivarium zoologists. The perpetual recur- 
rence, in inexorable succession, of arrival, death and departure, 
renders life in a collection of living things a constant struggle 
for equilibrium. 
As a mechanical cut-off in the annual supply of live animals, 
a great war possesses boundless possibilities for mischief. At 
this moment the procuring of a giraffe from Africa would be 
almost as difficult as the obtaining of a live mammoth trom 
Alaska; for both are equally impossible. By impossibilities in 
transportation, the entire supply of African antelopes now is 
cut off, as completely as if Africa had sunk to the depths of the 
sea. At the same time, the world’s stock of antelopes is dimin- 
ishing by death. 
Strange to say, however, the annual West African output 
of chimpanzees continues to arrive, both in London and in New 
York; and occasionally a baby orang survives the voyage from 
Singapore. 
During the past vear (1917), the bird collections of the Zoo- 
logical Park have been kept quite up to high-water mark, for 
which the Assistant Curator of Birds, Mr. L. S. Crandall, is de- 
serving of great credit. His diligence in exploiting the live-bird 
market, far and near, is alone responsible for our high figures 
both in species (813) and in specimens (2,799). 
In the mammal collections no falling off worthy of mention 
has occurred; and in one direction a great success has been 
scored. We have brought together a collection of kangaroos that 
is so large and so rich in species that it appears to have only 
