ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS—LOISEL. 435 
For the bears the garden has happily abandoned the old plan of 
keeping them in deep, damp and badly lighted pits, such as seen 
almost everywhere. They are given fine, large, open-air cages, 
covered or surrounded by verdure. 
The giraffes and dromedaries are placed, together with the zebras, 
wild asses, tapirs, and elephants, in an Egyptian temple whose ma- 
jestic front and fine architectural lines of great purity of style make 
it one of the finest edifices in the garden. The exterior walls and 
peristyle of this building are covered with Egyptian paintings rep- 
resenting the inhabitants of tropical regions coming to offer to the 
city of Antwerp examples of the most characteristic animals of their 
countries. 
The interior shows a large hall lighted from above and with lateral 
cages. The two giraffes only are shut off by glass partitions in order 
to give to their rooms the desired temperature. They have sometimes, 
but rarely, bred here, and the young are often affected with rickets, 
manifested by a chronic inflammation of the joints. 
The house for hippopotami is a large isolated building amply 
lighted on the sides and above. It contains three large, interior tanks, 
2.5 meters deep, which communicate freely behind with a stall having 
a cement floor. Each stall opens independently into an exterior pad- 
dock into which the animals are allowed to go during summer and in 
fine days during spring and autumn. In winter the water for the 
tanks is warmed to 15°. It is stagnant water, which does not appear 
to be renewed as often as it should, for when I was there it gave off 
an offensive odor. However, the animals seem to do well. A pair of 
hippopotami, brought to the garden in 1881, have bred with consid- 
erable regularity nearly every year since, bringing forth 13 young in 
seventeen years, 7 males and 6 females. Two of these died shortly 
after birth; the others have thriven very well. The male of this first 
pair died in 1904; the female is still living, but, as she seems to be 
no longer able to bear, the garden bought, in 1905, two young females 
to replace her: *.* * 
The buildings for the ruminants have generally exterior yards with 
a floor formed of a layer of sand resting on a bed of cinders, which 
appeared, however, to be very damp after days of rain. The exterior 
yards for the antelope house, placed in the middle of the building, 
are covered swith glass. 
The reindeer live on the average six years in the Antwerp Garden 
and give birth each year to two or three little ones. Their food is as 
follows: 
Morning: One kilo of oats, crushed maize, barley and rye mixed, 
besides two handfuls of lichens. 
Evening: One-half kilo dry white bread, besides two handfuls of 
lichens. 
