September 20, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



363 



winter and tropical summer of New York 

 form a peculiarly unfortunate combina- 

 tion, and none the less the Bronx Park at 

 New York is one of the most delightful 

 menageries in existence. The Zoological 

 Society of Scotland will have the great ad- 

 vantage of beginning where other institu- 

 tions have left off; it will be able to profit 

 by the experience and avoid the mistakes 

 of others. The Zoological Society of Lon- 

 don would welcome the establishment of a 

 menagerie in Scotland, for scientific and 

 practical reasons. As I am speaking in 

 Scotland, I may mention two of the prac- 

 tical reasons. The first is that in Great 

 Britain we labor under a serious disad- 

 vantage as compared with Germany with 

 regard to the importation of rare animals.- 

 When a dealer in the tropics has rare ani- 

 mals to dispose of, he must send them to 

 the best market, for dealing in wild ani- 

 mals is a risky branch of commerce. If 

 he send them to this country, there are 

 very few possible buyers, and it often hap- 

 pens 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, Bel- 

 gium and Holland are near at hand. Were 

 there twenty prosperous zoological gardens 

 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 the one hand, or of deaths on 

 the other, a particular institution is over- 

 stocked with one species or deficient in 

 another. 



One of the ideas strongly in the minds 

 of those who founded the earlier of mod- 

 em zoological gardens was the introduc- 

 tion and acclimatization 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 antiquity. A 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 first place 

 as educational 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 can 

 not acquire from books or pictures or lec- 

 tures 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 nom- 

 inal charge of a penny for each child, and 

 in cooperation with the educational com- 

 mittee of the London County Council, we 

 conduct courses of lectures and demonstra- 

 tions 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 color, such 

 play of light on contour and surface, such 

 intricate and beautiful harmonies of func- 

 tion and structure. To encourage art the 

 London Society allows students of recog- 

 nized schools of drawing and painting, 



