THE NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN 



435 



every way that their tortured ursine minds can devise in these big 

 rat-traps. 



No one appreciates these facts more keenly than Dr. Frank Baker, 

 the present superintendent of the gardens, and Mr. Blackburne, the 

 head keeper — a big-hearted man who knows animals, and feels for them 

 as though they were his own captured and caged relatives. But the 

 fault does not altogether lie in any such quarter ; for, were the necessary 



Fig. 1. The Kadiak Bear ; the largest earniverous animal in the world. 



amount appropriated by congress every year to make this park what it 

 really should be, a credit to the American nation and an educational 

 center of the greatest magnitude and importance, no such daily, hourly 

 acts of cruelty would be perpetrated, and the kind of article I am now 

 writing would never have been thought of, much less penned. 



It is truly a marvel that so much has been accomplished at our 

 "Zoo" with the meager means that the government allots for the pur- 

 pose. This year $100,000 has been appropriated for the purchase of 

 more land to be added to its present acreage, which is something, — a 

 step in the right direction for the future; and were it backed up by half 

 a million more, to be expended on what is now possessed and on its in- 

 habitants, it surely would be a matter for national congratulation. But 

 with salaries that would make a car conductor blush to receive; a third 

 of the rare animals housed in hat-boxes; no aquaria or reptile hous? 

 worthy of the name, — it's no wonder we are criticized. The idea of a 

 park, a " zoo " like ours, with no photographic gallery, and no prosector 

 or anatomical laboratory and work-rooms ! 



One of the grandest sights in our National Park at Washington is 

 the great flying-cage for large-sized living birds. This immense wire 

 structure is no less than 150 feet Ion?, and 50 feet high and wide. I 



