8o 



NATURE 



[September 19, 1912 



gardens of North Germany and the. excellent institu- 

 tion at Copenhagen have to endure winters much 

 more severe than those of lowland Scotland, whilst 

 the arctic winter and tropical summer of New York 

 form a peculiarly unfortunate combination, and none 

 the less the Bronx Park at New York is one of the 

 most delightful menageries in existence. The Zoo- 

 logical Society of Scotland will have the great advan- 

 tage of beginning where other institutions have left 

 off ; it will be able to profit by the experience and 

 avoid the mistakes of others. The Zoological Society 

 of London would welcome the establishment of a 

 menagerie in Scotland, for scientific and practical 

 reasons. As I am speaking in Scotland, I may men- 

 tion two of the practical reasons. The first is that in 

 Great Britain we labour under a serious disadvantage 

 as compared with Germany with regard to the im- 

 portation of rare animals. When a dealer in the 

 tropics has rare animals to dispose of, he must send 

 them to the best market, for dealing in wild animals 

 is a risky branch of commerce. If he send them to 

 this country, there are very few possible buyers, and 

 it often happens that he is unable to find a purchaser. 

 If he send them to Germany, one or other of the 

 twenty gardens is almost certain to absorb them, and, 

 failing Germany, Belgium and Holland are near at 

 hand. Were there twenty prosperous zoological gar- 

 dens in Great Britain, they could be better stocked, at 

 cheaper rates, than those we have now. The second 

 practical reason is that it is a great advantage to 

 menageries to have easy opportunities of lending and 

 exchanging animals ; for it often happens that as a 

 result of successful breeding or of gifts on one hand, 

 or of deaths on the other, a particular institution is 

 overstocked with one species or deficient in another. 



One of the ideas strongly in the minds of those 

 who founded the earlier of modern zoological gardens 

 was the introduction and acclimatisation of exotic 

 animals that might have an economic value. It is 

 curious how completely this idea has been abandoned 

 and how infertile it has proved. The living world 

 would seem to offer an almost unlimited range of 

 creatures which might be turned to the profit of man 

 and as domesticated animals supply some of his wants. 

 And yet I do not know of any important addition to 

 domesticated animals since the remotest antiquitv. 

 .\'few birds for the coverts, fancy water-fowl for ponds 

 and lakes, and brightly plumaged birds for cages or 

 for aviaries have been introduced, chiefly through 

 zoological societies, but we must seek other reasons 

 for their existence than these exiguous gains. 



Menageries are useful in the f^rst place as educa- 

 tional institutions, in the widest sense of the word. 

 Every new generation should have an opportunity of 

 seeing the wonder and variety of animated nature, 

 and of learning something that they cannot acquire 

 from books or pictures or lectures about the chief 

 types of wild animals. For that reason zoological 

 gardens should be associated in some form with 

 elementary and secondary education. We in London 

 admit the children from elementary schools on five 

 mornings in the week at the nominal charge of a 

 penny for each child, and in co-operation with the 

 Educational Committee of the London County Council, 

 we conduct courses of lectures and demonstrations for 

 the teachers, who will afterwards bring their children 

 to visit the gardens. 



Menageries provide one of the best schools for 

 students of art, for nowhere else than amongst living 

 animals, are to be found such strange fantasies of 

 colour, such play of light on contour and surface, such 

 intricate and beautiful harmonies of function and 

 structure. To encourage art the London society 

 allows students of recognised schools of draw-ing and 

 NO. 2238, VOL. 90] 



painting, modelling and designing, to use the gardens 

 at nominal rates. 



Menageries provide a rich material for the anatomist, 

 histologist, physiologist, parasitologist, and patho- 

 logist. It is surprising to note how many of the 

 animals used by Lamarck and Cuvier, Johannes 

 Muller and Wiedersheim, Owen and Huxley, were 

 obtained from zoological gardens. At all the more 

 important gardens increasing use is being made of the 

 material for the older purposes of anatomical research 

 and for the newer purposes of pathology and 

 physiology. 



There remains the fundamental reason for the exist- 

 ence of menageries, that they are collections of living 

 animals, and therefore an essential material for the 

 study of zoology. Systematic zoology, comparative 

 anatomy, and even morphology, the latter the most 

 fascinating. of all the attempts of the human intellect 

 to recreate nature within the categories of the human 

 mind, have their reason and their justification in the 

 existence of living animals under conditions in which 

 we can observe them. And this leads me to a remark 

 which ought to be a truism, but which, unfortunately, 

 is still far from being a truism. The essential difTer- 

 ence between a zoological museum and a menagerie 

 is that in the latter the animals are alive. The former 

 takes its value from its completeness, from the number 

 of rare species of which it has examples, and from 

 the extent to which its collections are properly classified 

 and arranged. The value of a menagerie is not its 

 zoological completeness, not the number of rare 

 animals that at any moment it may contain, not even 

 the extent to which it is duly labelled and systematic- 

 ally arranged^ but the success with which it displays 

 its inhabitants as living creatures under conditions in 

 which they can exercise at least some of their vital 

 activities. 



The old ideal of a long series of dens or cages in 

 which representatives of kindred species could mope 

 opposite their labels is surely but slowly disappearing. 

 It is a museum arrangement, and not an arrangement 

 for living animals. The old ideal by which the energy 

 and the funds of a menagerie were devoted in the first 

 place to obtaining species "new to the collection" or 

 "new to science" is surely but slowly disappearing. 

 It is the instinct of a collector, the craving of a 

 systematist, but is misplaced in those who have the 

 charge of living animals. Certainly we like to have 

 many species, to have rare species, and even to have 

 new species represented in our menageries. But what 

 we are learning to like most of all is to have the 

 examples of the species we possess, whether these be 

 new or old, housed in such a wav that thev can live 

 long, and live happily, and live under conditions in 

 which their natural habits, instincts, movements, and 

 routine of life can be studied by the naturalist and 

 enjoyed by the lover of animals. 



Slowly the new conditions are creeping in, most 

 slowly in the older institutions hampered bv lack of 

 space, cumbered with old and costly buildings, 

 oppressed by the habits of long years and the tradi- 

 tions established by men who none the less are justly 

 famous in the history of zoological science. Space, 

 open air, scrupulous attention to hygiene and diet, 

 the provision of some attempt at natural environment 

 are receiving attention that they have never received 

 before. You will see the signs of the change in ^Vash- 

 ington and New York, in London and Berlin, in 

 Antwerp and Rotterdam, and in all the gardens of 

 Germany. It was begun simultaneously, or at least 

 independently, in many places and under the inspira- 

 tion of many men. It is, I think, part of a general 

 orocess in which civilised man is replacing the old 

 hard curiosity ■ about nature by an attempt at sym- 



