C.6 



SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



FRANKFURT (Director, Dr. Kurt Priemel) 



The P^rankfurt zoo is next to the oldest in Germany ; it was 

 founded in 1858 and moved to its present location in 1874. There are 

 about 3,000 animals and birds in the collection which is the second 

 fmest in Germany. This was the first zoo to use a glass house for 

 reptiles and the first in Germany to have an exhibition of insects. 

 It was also the first to use plants and rock work in reptile cages. 



The collection contains two fine giraffes, a rhinoceros, and three 

 varieties of elephant (one of them, formerly with the Ringling Circus, 



Fig. 4; 



-African elephant, Frankfurt-am-Main, with Director and 

 Frail Priemel. 



has been living here for 15 years.) The African elephant is very tame 

 and is daily led about the grounds. Orangs have bred in the zoo, and 

 there is now a breeding pair of sloth bears. Two aardvaarks arrived 

 the same afternoon that we did, and the following morning they had 

 dug themselves in the ground and out of sight. Twenty-four species 

 of hornbills live in the park ; a pair of Jackson's hornbills was breed- 

 ing. The female had lieen sealed with mud in a wooden box nest by 

 the male, who brought food to her when it was placed in the cage. 

 In the aquarium and reptile house we saw the giant Amazon turtle, 

 Podocnemus expansa, which had been living there for six months, 

 and a Chinese alligator that arrived in Europe in 1886. A monitor, 

 now six feet long, was only six inches long when it came to the zoo. 



