FLORIDA AND THE WEST INDIES 27 



someone is supposed to have exclaimed on seeing a 

 famous millionaire strolling along Broadway ; "there 

 goes with his hand in his own pocket." 



The only other house of entertainment that I 

 visited in New York was the Hippodrome, the 

 very paragon of Hippodromes, where they give 

 blazing ballets to the plash of perfumed fountains, 

 everything on the colossal scale that alone can 

 captivate the senses of New York. At the theatres, 

 the absence of evening dress in the stalls, the 

 bulky programme, which attains the dimensions of 

 a magazine, and the fashion of handing round 

 glasses of iced water during the intervals, are the 

 chief reminders that New York is not London. 



Of all the city's sights, the most interesting to 

 myself were the Zoological Park, out at Bronx, 

 and the Aquarium, which occupies a disused fort 

 in the harbour. 



The Zoological Park, though far from comple- 

 tion at the time of my visit, had already surpassed 

 every other institution of the kind, and, in seeking 

 the causes that have contributed to this success, it 

 would be difficult to over-estimate the effect of the 

 Director's enthusiasm. Mr W. T. Hornaday, a 

 much-travelled sportsman with a genius for organi- 

 sation, was just the man to deal with a problem 

 that would puzzle many of equal, or even greater, 

 scientific attainments. He came to it from similar 

 employment elsewhere, but here for the first time 

 he found himself unopposed by the cheese-paring 

 policy, so un-American and so discouraging, that 

 had hampered all his earlier efforts. His hands 

 were free to give shape to his dreams, and when at 

 last he says his Nunc dimittis, he will also have 



