AN EXPERIMENT IN ANIMAL 
PRESERVATION. 
When the founders of our Zoological Gardens 
formed plans for acclimatizing foreign animals in 
England, they could scarcely have imagined that the 
Gardens might form almost the last preserve of 
animals then living in enormous numbers in America. 
Yet it is not beyond the limits of possibility, that our 
Zoological Gardens may within a few years contain 
the last living specimens of the American bison. It 
is said that thirty of the surviving herd in Yellow- 
stone Park were recently killed by poachers for the 
sake of their hides and horns, and the chances of 
their survival in the United States are thus further 
diminished. If they do not disappear altogether, it 
will be in a great degree due to an experiment in 
the preservation of wild animals and natural scenery, 
undertaken by a wealthy American, Mr. Austin 
Corbin. 
The story of the enterprise, so far as it has yet 
appeared, is given in a connected form in the last 
report of the Smithsonian Institution of Washington. 
