204 TEE ZOOLOOIOAL SOCIETY. 



West Middlesex Company at a heavy cost. Consequently the 

 Council decided to sink a new bore and erect machinery for 

 raising the water, which was done at a cost of about £1,300. 

 A saving of £150 was effected in the expenditure for water 

 supply the first year the well was used. 



In March, 1899, the new zebra house was finished at a 

 cost of about £1,100, and the animals put into the stalls, which 

 open into one large paddock. In the last year of the century 

 a second reservoir was constructed, and the pheasantry in the 

 North Garden put up ; but it was not opened till after the 

 Easter holidays in 1901. 



Important additions were made to the Menagerie in this 

 decade. In 1891 the first snow-leopard was acquired by pur- 

 chase ; unfortunately the animal, which is believed to have been 

 obtained in Bhotan, lived but a short time. Nevertheless, it 

 completed the series of the larger cats, all of which had now 

 been exhibited in the collection. Among the new birds were 

 Lhuys's Impeyan pheasant and the Tibet crossoptilon, or 

 Hodgson's eared pheasant — in both cases the first examples 

 received alive in Europe — the yellow-crowned penguin, and the 

 spotted-billed pelican. 



An example of the remarkable Hainan gibbon was presented 

 in 1892 ; this is the Yuen of Chinese classics, in which the 

 male is described as being black and the female white.^ No 

 European naturalist has seen this anthropoid in its native 

 haunts. Consul Swinhoe was told in the 'sixties by a magis- 

 trate of the island that this gibbon " had the power of drawing 

 into its body the long arm-bones, and that when it drew in one 

 arm it pushed out the other to such an extraordinary length 

 that he believed the two bones united in the body, and he said 

 they were used for chopsticks." Stairs's monkey, one of the 

 " green " group, obtained on the Lower Zambesi, and presented 

 by Dr. J. A. Moloney, of Stairs's expedition, was new to science. 

 Other specimens have since been exhibited ; the species is 

 easily recognisable by the chestnut band extending backward 

 from the forehead on each side. 



* A female received at the Gardens in January, 1904, was then quite hlack, 

 but in less than a year changed to silvery grey. Mr. K. T. Pocock's observations 

 {Proceedings, 1905, ii. 169-180, pi. 5) are of great interest. 



