116 
ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 
made him walk up and down the cage so that I 
might feel his stride. 
I cannot help thinking, however, that these 
noble creatures resent our timid familiarity. 
In the presence of the wild captives from jungle 
and forest I always sense the suppressed, fierce 
discord in the pipes of Pan. I know that the 
lion and the tiger have been snared from their 
natural environment into man’s world. They 
submit themselves to the tyrant who walks up¬ 
right, issues arbitrary commands and prohibits 
many pleasant things. They endure his laws 
and bear his yoke, but secretly they rebel, and 
when opportunity offers, they betray him. They 
never recognize his superiority or surrender 
themselves completely to his will. In their 
mysterious hearts they yield allegiance only to 
the primal laws of nature. They fear human 
beings and tolerate their caresses because they 
are afraid of punishment. Who has not ob¬ 
served the insolent bearing of the tiger toward 
the people who coddle him with words while 
fearing him even behind iron bars ? Who has 
not sensed the distrustful bewilderment in the 
eyes of the deer, and even of the horse, 'which 
has for thousands of years responded to the 
lightest touch of man’s hand! By dint of 
patience and intelligence man succeeds in trap¬ 
ping and confining the wild beasts of the earth, 
but they hear his voice only when he brings 
them food or threatens them. I suspect that if 
they once regained their liberty, all of them 
would take reprisals of him, and I am sure some 
of them would devour him without a prick of 
conscience. Hagenbeck says in his fascinating 
book on animals that to win the affection of 
wild animals is so rare a gift, it seems almost 
superhuman. The dog is the only animal in 
nature’s annals which has made friends with 
man. Only the dog draws close to him and to 
some extent shares in his joys and sorrows. 
The dog, alone of the animal kingdom, acknowl¬ 
edges man’s superiority and thinks only of 
being useful to him, lives only to serve him 
with unquestioning devotion. 
All my life I have been interested in animals. 
Since my early childhood the circus has fasci¬ 
nated me. I have visited nearly all the im¬ 
portant zoological parks and menageries in this 
country. I have made the acquaintance of 
African buffaloes, hippopotami, sea-lions, 
camels (and I wondered how any one ever 
thought of swallowing one!) I have touched a 
prairie wolf and a Colorado coyote. When I 
lived in Wrentham, Massachusetts, wild deer 
frequently ventured into our garden to eat let¬ 
tuce and other vegetables. They had been 
protected by law from hunters so long that they 
had almost lost their fear of man. I could 
never get close enough to touch them, but if I 
sat under the old apple tree at the end of the 
garden where it joined the hayfield, until they 
had finished their salad, I could feel their lioof- 
beats as they charged across the field into the 
woods beyond. 
All these contacts with animal life have helped 
to make the world I live in real and vastly in¬ 
teresting. I am sorry for any one who has 
never known the sheer pleasure of meeting face 
to face a wild creature of the forest. There is 
a wealth of adventure in watching the drama 
of wild life that is always going on in the woods 
or in one of the zoological parks. When people 
I meet admit that they have never been to a 
“zoo,” I am tempted to exclaim, “Is it possible 
that your city has gathered from the four 
quarters of the earth such a collection of won¬ 
ders, and you have never seen them? Go at 
once to your zoological park, it will give you a 
variety of experiences you have missed. Be¬ 
sides, it is one of the most delightful means of 
gaining health of body and mind. A ramble in 
the park will renew your youth. The spring- 
tide of new life that flows through every path 
and green alley will bring a fresh thrill of life 
and love into your heart.” 
It was a visit to the Zoological Park of New 
York City that inspired the idea of this article. 
One day last summer I took my three little 
nieces from Alabama, who were visiting me, to 
see the animals. A blazing sun glared in the 
deep blue heavens, but the children did not 
mind that. Anyway, the Park was full of cool, 
shady spots where a great many people from 
the city sat indolently, enjoying their beautiful 
surroundings. For the three little southern girls 
there was an indefinable spirit of adventure in 
the air. (The Country of Children’s Land is 
always full of surprises.) Pat, Mildred and 
Katharine were as full of suppressed excitement 
as Alice in Wonderland when she popped down 
the rabbit-hole, and they were as greedy to 
discover new worlds as Columbus himself. They 
did not fall into a Pool of Tears that I know 
of, they did not run a race with a lory, a dodo, 
an eaglet and a mouse, but the furry and feath¬ 
ered folk of the Park were just as magical. 
Their insatiate curiosity and outbursts of joy 
carried me back on the wings of memory to the 
time when I was more interested in the wild 
folk I met than in human beings. 
Spellbound the children watched some seals 
gambolling in the water, climbing rocks, barking 
in the sunshine, tumbling off again and swim- 
