Special Meeting ] 526 [March 28, 



our severe winters. This would familiarize the city boy with the 

 appearance, habits and life of animals which surround him, but 

 which by his circumstances he rarely even sees. But of this edu- 

 cational side of the question others can speak much better than I. 

 This, then, in general, is the scheme which has been devised, to 

 which we invite your attention, and for which we ask j^our suffrages 

 if so inclined. As to the method of carrying this out, it is plain 

 at the very outset that no such scheme can be carried on without 

 a veiy considerable fund behind it. The Society itself has no means 

 it can divert to such a purpose, and it can only afford to support 

 and administer such a new undertaking on the basis of a special 

 fund for that purpose. It has seemed, therefore, to the committee 

 necessary that two things should be undertaken to enable the So- 

 ciety to cany on this laudable enterprise. First, the friends of 

 the Society should raise a fund of $200,000, a permanent fund as 

 a basis for the undertaking ; a guarantee fund, of which the prin- 

 cipal, or at the very least one-half of it, should on no account be 

 infringed upon ; the source of a revenue, which should make it for- 

 ever certain that no temporary misfortune to the garden should 

 cripple the legitimate work of the Society in the sphere with which 

 it has hitherto contented itself, but that the funds heretofore given 

 to the Society, whether encumbered or not with special conditions, 

 should be regarded as forever sacred to the uses to which they 

 have hitherto been put. The second condition which the committee 

 has thought necessary to the financial success of the scheme is that 

 a body of members should be brought into the Society through the 

 attraction which the garden would offer, paying an annual fee as 

 their contribution towards its support, and receiving in return the 

 privileges which membership would give. On this basis, the reg- 

 ular sources of income would be the annual interest of the perma- 

 nent fund, or as much of it as might be needed, the park member- 

 ship fee and the receipts at the gate. From these and from other 

 incidental sources it has been roughly estimated that perhaps 

 $30,000 might be annually raised, and this was considered ample 

 for the present maintenance of the garden ; for it was not in- 

 tended to push the scheme to its full proportions at once, but rather 

 to move forward with prudence and without too great ambition. 

 The plan, in fact, is to have an establishment which should be com- 

 plete in itself at the start, good as far as it went, but not at the 

 first grand. 



