Tur ZooLocist—JunNz, 1876. 4951 
square. The height of the building at the central elevation is 30 
feet. At the back of the dens is a wide passage extending the 
whole length of the building. From this passage doors open into 
every inner den, and in this are fixed the chains and pulleys for 
opening the sliding doors between the dens, so that the whole of 
the work connected with cleaning and management of the animals 
is effected from behind. In the centre, at the back of the passage 
are two day-rooms and four sleeping-rooms for the keepers, two of 
whom will always sleep on the premises. The four out-door 
playing-cages behind, which are still to be erected, measure 44 feet 
by 29. The animals will be transferred into them through a kind 
of movable tunnel running on wheels along the keeper’s passage. 
The present occupants of the Lion-house consist of six lions, 
seven tigers, two jaguars, two leopards, three pumas, and a clouded 
tiger, altogether twenty-one in number. The only desideratum 
among the larger Felide is the ounce (Felis uncia) of the moun- 
tains of Central Asia, of which as yet no living specimen, it is 
believed, has ever been brought to this country. 
In order to furnish winter quarters for a pair of the giant tortoises 
of the Aldabra Islands, acquired last summer, the glass front which 
formerly covered a portion of the old Lions’ dens was removed into 
the North Gardens, and re-erected there, at a total cost of 
£105 14s. 8d. With the addition of a back wall and a small 
heating apparatus, a very efficient building has thus been formed 
for the object in contemplation. 
Losses by Death in the Menagerie, and the Causes thereof.-— 
Prof. A. H. Garrod, the Society’s Prosector, has continued his 
investigations into the causes of death of the animals that have 
died in the Gardens during the past year. He reports that the 
death-list of the year 1875 indicates that chronic rather than acute 
diseases were the causes of mortality in an unusual percentage of 
cases, which (as it indicates that the incentives to immediate 
disease, such as cold and bad hygienic arrangements, were absent) 
is a very favourable sign. The female Indian elephant and the 
manatee were the most serious losses, the former having suffered 
from chronic phthisis and rheumatic arthritis, the latter apparently 
from the lack of a food sufficiently nutritious for its requirements. 
Such food it is, of course, extremely difficult to procure in this 
country, if we may form any estimate of its ordinary quantity from 
the habits of the animal in a state of nature. 
