AN ANTEDILUVIAN ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN. 



Bv DK. ALFRED GRAUEXWITZ. 



Though no human fanc\' could imagine the infinite 

 variety of forms embodied in the representatives of 

 the animal and vegetable kingdoms — either of which 

 is known to number hundreds of thousands of 

 different Sfiecies — an even superficial glance at the 



I'liU'RL 1. Sfi_iiiisiin n(s .\-<>,u\rd bv Cci'iiti>s,Tii rii\. 



fossil remains of extinct organisms shows that 

 Nature in the "course of bygone ages has brought 

 forth many startling forms to which 

 no analogy is to be found in our 

 present vegetation or fauna. 



Carl Hagenbeck. the founder of 

 the famous animal park at Stellin- 

 gen, near Hamburg, where even 

 the most savage beasts are kept in 

 a state of apparent freedom, has 

 installed in his Garden of Eden a 

 series of wonderfully life-like repre- 

 sentations of the most striking 

 monsters that inhabited our earth 

 in prehistoric times, thus creating 

 what mav be called an Antediluvian 

 Zoological Garden. These weird 

 giants, who millions of years ago 

 ruled this world of ours, can be 

 seen in surroundings corresponding 

 to their verv modes of life, thus 

 producing a perfect illustration of 

 what the earth looked like in their 

 days. In fact, an hour spent in 

 that strangest of all sceneries brings 



us back as in a dream to a world which the 



science of palaeontology allows us to reconstitute in 



its very details. 



In that long-distant past the struggle for life among 



the animal dwellers on earth must have been much 

 more acute than even now. A per- 

 petual \\ar was waged betw een those 

 monsters, startling alike by their 

 form and enornious size. The mani- 

 fold natural weapons which Nature 

 had lavished upon them proved no 

 sufficient protection in the course 

 of time, the more so as the chang- 

 ing climatic conditions sealed their 

 final doom to extinction. Apart 

 from such features as are entailed 

 by the peculiar conditions of their 

 antediluvian world, these animals 

 certainly ha\e much in common 

 with existing species, their remote 

 descendants, and strikingK- illus- 

 trate the slow evolution from one 

 class to another, with man^■ inter- 

 mediate stages between reptile 

 and bird, fish and mammal, and 

 so on. 



These a n t e d i 1 u \' i a n cement 



models, made in artistic perfection 



b\- the well-known animal sculptor, Mr. J. Pallen- 



berg, have been arranged in an impressive group 



Figure 2. AUoSiitints feeding; on the remains of a Brontusaiinib 



257 



