ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 
25 
It was further decided that the flora of the 
park should be confined to Australian trees, 
ferns and palms with the exception of her¬ 
baceous bedding plants necessary for special 
color effects. 
The grounds, naturally picturesque and well 
covered with eucalyptus, angophora, acacea and 
other beautiful trees, shrubs and ferns were 
made more beautiful by the landscape garden¬ 
er’s art. The animal enclosures, for the most 
part made to resemble the natural sandstone of 
the country, were masked and softened with 
pretty foliage trees so that the net result has 
been to show the animals in a rather spectacular 
fashion, in beautiful surroundings, and removed 
as far as the space available permitted from the 
ordinary attributes of confinement. 
The primates have a series of walled en¬ 
closures containing rocky shelters and fairly 
high trees. The height of the containing wall 
varies with the species exhibited from eight feet 
vertical and twelve feet for the spider monkeys, 
crab-eating macaques, etc., to fourteen and six¬ 
teen feet respectively, for the more active mem¬ 
bers of the family such as the rhesus, all the 
green monkeys and small baboons, up to an ex¬ 
treme of twenty by twenty feet for such won¬ 
derful ieapers as the langurs and the large 
baboons. It must be admitted, however, that 
the details had to be altered several times be¬ 
fore these active and lean members of the ani¬ 
mal kingdom would consent to “stay put,” for 
several specimens surmounted seemingly impos¬ 
sible obstacles to gain their liberty. 
The star attraction in this section is not yet 
finished. This is an enclosure about 150 by 
75 feet surrounding a hill sixty-six feet high, in 
which it is hoped to exhibit several hundred 
monkeys. Practically every boulder in the hill 
will be a shelter with a screen in .front, to ad¬ 
mit only animals of a certain size so that the 
smaller species will always have a handy refuge 
if pursued. 
The large apes, which are more or less dan¬ 
gerous when excited, must at all times be kept 
under control, and therefore are kept in a 
strongly-made house. 
The large carnivora are divided into two sec¬ 
tions, the bears and the felines. The lions and 
tigers are housed in twin enclosures containing 
an exhibition yard about fifty feet square sur¬ 
rounded by walls from sixteen to twenty feet 
in height and fronted by a moat twenty-six 
feet in width by sixteen deep. There are three 
large sleeping and catching dens attached. All 
openings are controlled by sliding doors bal¬ 
anced by counter weights and in addition se¬ 
cured by a pin and locked chain, so that three 
separate actions are necessary to open, thus 
eliminating possibility of accident due to care¬ 
lessness. 
The measurements of the moat were based 
on data gathered by Colonel Sanderson when 
hunting tigers in India. He found that under 
good conditions a tiger could leap a ravine 
eighteen feet wide, and therefore another eight 
feet was allowed as margin, but at the same 
time giving the animal a bad take-off, which 
puts the animal at a disadvantage of several 
feet. In actual practice this width has proved 
too wide, and it is probable that a distance of 
eighteen feet under similar conditions would 
prove more than sufficient. The whole structure 
is built to look like the natural sandstone, and 
resembles the general landscape. 
The bears occupy a large terrace on the 
southern side of the gardens. There are six 
exhibition yards, fronting a natural rocky wall, 
each surrounded by a moat fifteen feet in width 
by ten deep for the large species such as polar, 
grizzly and brown, and from six to four 'and 
one-half feet wide by six to five feet deep for 
the American black, Himalayan and Malayan 
bears. Each yard has two large catching or 
shelter dens attached. The animals’can be seen 
from both sides of the enclosures, and are gen¬ 
erally only ten feet away from the visitor. Here 
the bears are quite contented and owing to no 
visible barriers are seen under good conditions. 
The polar bears especially, with their large 
swimming bath are quite at home, and if they 
take any interest at all in things beyond their 
home the blue waters of the harbor are in 
keeping with this maritime species. They are 
in fact part of the “window dressing” of the 
park, for visitors on incoming ships are shown 
those white forms in the distance and take an 
early opportunity of a closer inspection. 
The elephants are the only animals in the 
gardens for which an ornamental house has been 
built. They have a building designed like an 
Indian temple with access to an exercise yard 
which is bounded by a moat ten feet wide by 
eight deep, a space that they can just reach 
over with their trunks but which forms an im¬ 
passable barrier. At one end of the yard is a 
large bath, and here in hot weather they love 
to disport, plunging right under the water and 
showing by their actions that a bath is just as 
enjoyable to them is it is to a human. 
The female elephant “Taronga” is the oldest 
inhabitant of the park, having been received in 
