44 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. 
sanctuaries. Under no condition should they be open to the sportsman. No gun 
should be fired, no animal slaughtered or captured save by the direct authority of 
the wardens of the sanctuaries, and for the direct advantage of the denizens of the 
sanctuaries, for the removal of noxious individuals, the controlling of species that 
were increasing beyond reason, the extirpation of diseased or unhealthy animals. 
The obvious examples are not the game reserves of the Old World, but the 
National Parks of the New World and of Australasia. In the United States, for 
instance, there are now the Yellowstone National Park with over two million 
acres, the Yosemite in California with nearly a million acres, the Grand Caiion 
Game Preserve with two million acres, the Mount Olympus National Monu- 
ment in Washington with over half a million acres, and the Superior Game and 
Forest Preserve with nearly a million acres, as well as a number of smaller 
reserves for special purposes, and a chain of coastal areas all round the shores 
for the preservation of birds. In Canada, in Alberta, there are the Rocky Moun- 
tains Park, the Yoho Park, Glacier Park, and Jasper Park, together extending to 
over nine million acres, whilst in British Columbia there are smaller sanctuaries. 
These, so far as laws can make them, are inalienable and inviolable sanctuaries 
for wild animals. We ought to have similar sanctuaries in every country of the 
world, national parks secured for all time against all the changes and chances 
of the nations by international agreement. In the older and more settled coun- 
tries the areas selected unfortunately must be determined by various considera- 
tions, of which faunistic value cannot be the most important. But certainly in 
Africa, and in large parts of Asia, it would still be possible that they should be 
selected: in the first place for their faunistic value. The scheme for them should 
be drawn up by an international commission of experts in the geographical dis- 
tribution of animals, and the winter and summer haunts of migratory birds 
should be taken into consideration. It is for zoologists to lead the way, by laying 
down what is required to preserve for all time the most representative and most 
complete series of surviving species without any reference to the extrinsic value 
of the animals. And it then will be the duty of the nations, jointly and severally, 
to arrange that the requirements laid down by the experts shall be complied with. 
And now I come to the last side of my subject, that of Zoological Gardens, 
with which I have been specially connected in the last ten years. My friend 
M. Gustave Loisel, in his recently issued monumental ‘ Histoire des Ménageries,’ 
has shown that in the oldest civilisations of which we have record, thousands of 
years before the Christian Era, wild animals were kept in captivity. He is in- 
clined to trace the origin of the custom to a kind of totemism. Amongst the 
ancient Egyptians, for instance, besides the bull and the serpent, baboons, hippo- 
potami, cats, lions, wolves, ichneumons, shrews, wild goats and wild sheep, 
and, of lower animals, crocodiles, various fishes and beetles weré held sacred in 
different towns. These animals were protected, and even the involuntary killing 
of any of them was punished by the death of the slayer; but besides this general 
protection, the priests selected individuals which they recognised by infallible 
signs as being the divine animals, and tamed, guarded and fed them in the 
sacred buildings, whilst the revenues derived from certain tracts of land were set 
apart for their support. The Egyptians were also famous hunters and kept and 
tamed various wild animals, including cheetahs, striped hyznas, leopards, and 
even lions, which they used in stalking their prey. The tame lions were sometimes 
clipped, as in ancient Assyria, and used both in the chase and in war. The 
rich Egyptians of Memphis had large parks in which they kept not only the 
domestic animals we now know, but troops of gazelles, antelopes, and cranes 
which were certainly tame and were herded by keepers with wands. So also in 
China, at least fifteen centuries before our era, wild animals were captured in the 
far north by the orders of the Emperor and were kept in the Royal Parks, A few 
centuries later the Emperor Wen-Wang established a zoological collection between 
Pekin and Nankin, his design being partly educational, as it was called the Park 
of Intelligence. In the valley of the Euphrates, centuries before the time of 
Moses, there were lists of sacred animals, and records of the keeping in captivity 
of apes, elephants, rhinoceroses, camels and dromedaries, gazelles and antelopes, 
and it may well be that the legend of the Garden of Eden is a memory of the 
Royal Menagerie of some ancient king. The Greeks, whose richest men had none 
of the wealth of the Egyptians or of the princes of the East, do not appear to 
have kept many wild animals, but the magnates of imperial Rome captured large 
