ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS OF THE WORLD. 



165 



very numerous additions, particularly from the French Consul at 

 Cairo. The stock of animals during this period is said to have 

 reached " several thousands." 



For nearly a hundred years this Versailles menagerie appears 

 to have been kept in good order, and was of the greatest value to 

 the zoologists of those times. But during the later years of 

 Louis XV. (1715-1774) it fell to a very low ebb of efficiency, and 

 abuses were prevalent. It is said that a Camel was supplied, at 

 the cost of the State, with six bottles of Burgundy wine daily, 

 and that when the animal died a soldier of the Swiss Guard 

 petitioned to be given the vacant billet of Court Camel. 



In October 1789 the menagerie was almost destroyed by the 

 Parisian mob : the only animals that survived this attack were 

 a Senegal Lion, a Dalmatian Hound, an Indian Rhinoceros, a 

 South African Quagga, an Algerian Hartebeest and a Moluccan 

 Pigeon (fide E. T. Hamy). 



The idea of forming a collection of live animals in the old- 

 established Botanical Garden of Paris is apparently due to Buffon, 

 but he died in 1788 without seeing the realization of his plan. 



By the law of the 10th of June 1793 the Paris Museum of 

 Natural History was reorganized, and later in the same year the 

 Jardin des Plantes menagerie was started. The animals were 

 first lodged under the galleries of the Museum, and later on 

 were housed in that part of the Garden between the great 

 Chestnut Avenue and the street now called the Rue Cuvier, 

 known as La Vallee Suisse : where their successors still remain. 



The first animals reached the Museum on the 4th of November 

 1793 ; they were a Sea-Lion, a Leopard, a Civet-Cat and a Mon- 

 key, and were at once taken charge of by Etienne Geoftroy 

 Saint-Hilaire, then twenty-one years old. The next day the 

 arrivals included a White Bear and two Mandrills, and in the 

 following spring the few surviving inhabitants of the Versailles 

 menagerie were brought to the Garden. 



Of the early German menageries I have been able to obtain 

 but little information. Herr Schoepf mentions, in his ' Gedenk- 

 blatter,' 1552 as the earliest date when an Imperial menagerie 

 existed, and says that the Dresden menagerie was started by 

 Kurfurst August I. in 1554 : up to 1737 the only animals men- 

 tioned as having been kept at Dresden are Mandrills, Lions, 



