FOURTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT 117 



native woodland, growing a variety of beautiful trees. Where 

 the trees cease the natural rock, a schist glimmering with crys- 

 tals, rises in abrupt mounds and ridges, and against these rock 

 defences the cages, if the word is allowable, are built. One ridge 

 is inhabited wholly by bears, which run down from the natural 

 heights or emerge from almost natural caves at the beck of the 

 keeper. 



"All along the ridges the bears, the great grizzly or the 

 little black bear, have a mien, a pose, an attitude that suggests 

 anything but captivity. Their coats — which in all animals pro- 

 claim the degree of health — have a silky, satiny gleam, sug- 

 gestive of a well-groomed horse. They live there a quiet, happy 

 life. Even Wordsworth might have said of these, as of the wild 

 flowers: T must believe that there was pleasure there.' The 

 pleasure was general among big things and small. 



"Walking down from the bears' hill we came to the beavers' 

 pond. Lying across it are a number of trees, which the beavers 

 have themselves cut through on the spot. You could watch and 

 test the wild habits of the animal as well in the Bronx as in its 

 haunts. A precise instance of the value of the Bronx as an ob- 

 servation ground was laid out before us. In an admirable and 

 most accurate book recently published it is written that the 

 beavers never plaster their houses with mud. From the water 

 of the beavers' pond at the Bronx rose a house which, in spite of 

 the book, the beavers had completely plastered with mud. Is 

 there any other 'zoo' in the world where, in regard to such a 

 habit of wild life, the field observer could be so corrected? 



"THE ANIMALS AT WOBURN. 



"Nowhere in the world are animals so well seen as at the 

 Duke of Bedford's park at Woburn. Herds of wapiti gallop 

 down towards you, with the impetus of a charge, over many 

 acres. Great buffalo appear and disappear over the brow, or 

 come down to the rail to lick lumps of rock salt. Yaks and 

 ostriches and deer of many sorts career as on Tibetan hills or 

 African plains across your path. From above, you watch ponds 

 which are almost lakes encircled by a baffling variety of ducks 

 and geese. Such a sight no 'zoo' can rival ; not even the happy 

 hunting grounds of East Africa have its like. Nevertheless the 

 appearance of the bison in their reserve as you enter the gates 

 of the Bronx Park at once recalled Woburn, and the animals, 

 though the space is not large in acreage, have the air of enjoy- 

 ing a real freedom. 



