THE LONDON ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY AND ITS GAR- 
DENS.—AN OBJECT LESSON FOR NEW YORK. 
BY WILLIAM T. HORNADAY. 
The evolution of every American city proceeds on a uniform 
plan. Immutable laws demand, in regular order, a supply of 
dwellings, schools, churches, business blocks, water, sewerage, 
pavements, police and fire protection. These are the essentials of 
life in a municipality. Next in order come high schools, col- 
leges, libraries, hospitals and universities. The next stage wit- 
nesses the rise of the park system, the scientific museum, the 
art gallery, and the zoological garden, in the order named. Of 
all municipal institutions, the last effort is the zoological garden, 
or park; and it is the high-water mark of civilization and prog- 
ress. 
-During the last twenty years, nearly a score of American cit- 
ies have become aroused to the necessity of purchasing generous 
areas of land for park purposes, before the march of improve- 
ments should seriously interfere with the development of broad 
and liberal plans. Cities of the second and third class have bought 
hundreds of acres, and cities of the first class have bought 
in thousands. In 1888-9 Washington acquired 1,500 acres; in 
1884 New York purchased 4,000 choice acres in the Annexed 
District alone, and in 1894 Boston acquired a still broader domain 
of 6,000 acres. ‘To-day the American city which does not own a 
generous area of unimproved, or half-improved, park land, which 
has been acquired during recent years, is an exception. 
All this has to do with our subject, and touches the matter in 
hand. Give a progressive American city an abundant area of 
park land, and the step to a zoological garden is a natural one. 
As our beautiful American quadrupeds and birds disappear, in- 
terest in them, and a general desire to know them better azd /o 
preserve them, increases day by: day. At this moment the cities 
of New York, Washington, Pittsburg, Providence, Buffalo, Roch- 
ester and San Francisco are at work on the zoological-garden 
problem, each endeavoring to solve it according to its individual 
