‘ZOOS’ AND NATIONAL PARKS. 
BY 
SIR PETER CHALMERS MITCHELL, C.B.E., F.R.S. 
THERE are three types of institutions for the display of living animals, each with 
specific functions and opportunities. The Zoological Garden in a city is, so to speak, 
a ‘ close-up’ of the animal kingdom, endeavouring to present a picture of the richness 
and variety of the groups of animals, bringing its subjects from the tropics and the 
snows, from forests and plains, rivers and seas, so far as it is possible to reproduce 
artificially on a small scale the conditions in which they can live. The country 
Zoological Park has a larger area and simpler arrangements, and although the attempt 
is made to display creatures from many different environments, the choice must be 
restricted to animals which can prosper under conditions sometimes widely different 
from those of their natural homes. The National Park, using the term not in the 
wide sense which troubled Dr. Addison’s Committee, but in the restricted sense of a 
large tract of country, as nearly virgin as possible, dedicated for all time as a sanctuary 
for its native animals and plants, should contain no animals, not at present native 
to the locality, except such as had recently been exterminated and were now 
reintroduced for their preservation, as for example the American bison in the great 
national park of the United States and Canada. 
In the city zoo, as visitors had the opportunity of getting very close to the animals, 
it was necessary to provide barriers to protect both animals and visitors and houses, 
cages, glass screens and cases recalling those of a museum rather than of nature. In 
the country zoo the barriers need be only of the simplest kind, preferably sunk ditches, 
so that nothing comes between the eye of the visitor and the animals. In the com- 
pletely developed national park of the future the ordinary arrangements in collections 
of living animals might have to be reversed, and wired walks or travelling cages made 
for the visitors, not for the animals. 
With regard to finance, in time each of the three should be self-supporting by 
revenues drawn from visitors. But the three should be interdependent. The country 
zoo will become a breeding ground and recuperating station for many of the animals 
of the town zoo, and the surplus stock of the national parks will become more and 
more the chief source of supply for the zoos of the town and of the country. 
There were now many well-managed zoological gardens and parks in different 
parts of the world, and an increasing number of large areas for the preservation of 
the native fauna and flora in the United States of America, Canada, Australia and New 
Zealand, Asia and Africa, but to avoid diffuseness Sir Peter took the London Zoo, 
which celebrated its centenary two years ago, its new country annexe at Whipsnade, 
opened this year, and the Pare National Albert in the Belgian Congo, as examples 
of his theme. 
He then described in detail the relations of animals in the London Zoological 
Gardens to the primary requirements of light, temperature and fresh air, general 
sanitation, diseases and parasites, and said that the Zoological Society had been 
pioneers in adapting the conditions to the new physiological knowledge of hygiene. 
He directed special attention to the experimental work done in the use of vita glass 
and artificial sunlight, and to the far greater importance of fresh air than artificially 
maintained equable temperatures. He paid a tribute to the research work done by 
his colleague, Dr. Joan B. Procter, who had died on the morning of September 20. 
Sir Peter then explained the reasons which induced the Zoological Society to 
acquire a country estate at Whipsnade, and described the progress that had been 
made in developing the new scheme. 
Zoological gardens in cities and in the country added to zoological knowledge and 
stimulated public interest in the beauty of wild animals. On the other hand, there 
remained the very important problem of preserving the wild fauna of the world. In 
1912, when he had been President of the Zoological Section of the British Association 
at Dundee, he had devoted the greater part of his address to that subject. As instances 
of the rapidity with which wild animals might disappear he had then taken the 
examples of the American bison and the American Passenger Pigeon. In 1867 there 
were still millions of bison roaming over the plains and forests of North America, but 
in that year the building of the Union Pacific Railroad, the first great trans-conti- 
nental line, had cut the herd in two. The southern half, consisting of several million 
