446 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1907. 
hoping later to present a work upon the utilization of such estab- 
lishments, not only for theoretical and practical science, but also for 
the education of artists and the general instruction of the public. 
From an administrative point of view the great zoological gardens 
fall into four categories: 
First. Those of (Crem Britain are carried on by a superintendent 
under the effective direction of the secretary of the society to whom 
the property belongs. 
Second. The garden at Antwerp is administered and carried on 
by the president of the society aided by the director of the garden. 
Third. The garden at The Hague is administered and carried on 
by a director appointed every five years. 
Fourth. The gardens at Rotterdam and Amsterdam are admin- 
istered and carried on freely by a director under the annual control 
of a council of administration. 
The last of these systems seems to me to be the one best calculated 
to give a sustained activity and a progressive improvement in the 
methods of caring for the animals. The third one, on the contrary, 
seems the least fruitful of good results. 
The following table will enable one to form a general idea of the 
activity of the great zoological gardens which I visited during the 
latter part of the year 1905-6. I will merely remark that the re- 
sources of the societies are composed of fixed fees for the members, 
annual subscriptions, gate receipts, sale of living or dead animals, 
milk, eggs, guidebooks and postal cards, rent of restaurants or 
amusement halls, and finally gifts, either of animals or money. 
While the zoological gardens at London and Amsterdam, and the 
aquariums at Plymouth, Port Erin, and St. Hélier have undertaken 
more or less important works in morphology, physiology, or taxon- 
omy, and the resources of the first two of these institutions have also 
enabled them to publish scientific periodicals whose value I willingly 
recognize, yet not one of them has undertaken the work for which it 
would seem they were really established, that is to say, observations 
or experiments made patiently and for a long time on living animals 
to determine their habits, reproductions, and relations with their 
environment, in fact upon what we have a right to ask of zoologists— 
the study of experimental transformism. 
IT am not, indeed, the only one who has made reflections of this 
kind. Already, in 1889, Professor Ray-Lankester remarked that, 
since Darwin, no large progress had been made in the line of general 
zoology, and he regretted that zoological gardens had always been 
conducted as popular exhibitions. (Hncyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 
NOX E pL SL (a) 
If these gardens have not been used for the study of general 
zoology, it would seem that, unfortunately, they have not materially 
