The Survivors 



and has given the most important and most valuable results. 

 Everything should be done to support efforts of this kind. 



But in this department it is to an increasing extent the 

 duty of our German museums to promote a knowledge of 

 and an interest in the animal world of far-off lands by the 

 display of ample collections, so arranged as to convey 

 instruction. There has already been gratifying progress 

 in this respect, but it is clear that for the development of 

 these ideas we need more extensive, up-to-date buildings 

 for our collections and museums. Other countries, especially 

 England, and above all America, are far in advance of us 

 in this matter. Our zoological gardens have the task of 

 putting the living animal world before us. Happily we are 

 doing this by far-sighted methods. To the Zoological 

 Gardens of Berlin belongs the credit of having, to a con- 

 tinually increasing extent, arranged a display of the animal 

 world in appropriate surroundings, and with reference to 

 systematic classification and to its relations with geographical 

 distribution and ethnological science, so far as one can 

 assume the connection or companionship of certain species 

 with man. There we see the disappearing species of wild 

 cattle housed, each according to its peculiar character, in 

 enclosures that are strictly true to nature, and artistically 

 designed. Thus, for instance, the American bison now 

 hardly to be obtained for its weight in gold is shown in 

 surroundings that remind us of the North American 

 Indians, these also a disappearing race. The ostrich-house 

 takes us back to the land of the Pharaohs, of which the 

 ostrich was once a characteristic inhabitant, as well as the 

 ichneumon, the crocodile:, and the hippopotamus. Then 



161 ] i 



