CAPTIVE ANIMALS 197 



that being from becoming, and becoming from being 

 called evolution. 



The physical condition of animals in the zoo is evidence 

 enough of the truth of this. In spite of all the care 

 lavishly spent upon them, the zoo animals are sick, 

 sick in spirit and bored with an inexpressible tedium, 

 stupefied and stultified from inaction. The differences 

 between the wild and the caged animal are so many and 

 striking that it is not extravagant to compare them with 

 the differences between the people in the streets and 

 prisoners in their cells, or, better, consumptives in a 

 sanatorium. How should the animals not be such, when 

 they are largely deprived of the six primary joys of liberty, 

 and qualification of fitness to environment the power of 

 mating and rearing and educating their young, the power 

 of enjoying the companionship of social life (the vast 

 majority of mammals and birds are social), the power of 

 exercising their suppleness of body or strength of wing 

 in graceful movement, the power of meeting in the most 

 efficient way the variety of circumstances attending daily 

 life, the excitements and realities of the hunt for food, 

 and last, but not least, the power of satisfying their ever- 

 lasting curiosity? The case for reforming the zoo is 

 unanswerable on scientific grounds alone, since, in its 

 present condition, it forcibly sunders the biological trinity 

 (verily three in one and one in three) of Organism, Func- 

 tion, and Environment. 



Now, granted that there are not sufficient funds to 

 make a miniature Yellowstone Park of the zoo, there 

 is no question but that the most urgent reforms call for 

 but a small outlay viz., the abolition of solitary confine- 

 ment, and the need for space, more space for our charges, 

 and indeed light, more light for us. There is no room? 

 But there is actually more room in the gardens than is 

 occupied by the animals. The zoo is not a flower garden 

 or a country gentleman's lawn, or a Kensington Gardens 

 where the carpet bedder can pursue his grotesque experi- 



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