ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN, VIENNA: INSPECTOR, A. KRAUS
This Garden, which belongs to the Emperor of Austria, is situated in
the grounds of the Emperor’s summer residence at Schönbrunn, an environ
of Vienna. No one is permitted to take photographs in it.
After passing through the palace-gates, turn to the right, and a short
walk through beautifully kept gardens brings you to the Zoological
Garden, in which there is a fine collection of animals and birds.
The first cages are occupied by goats and sheep, forming a large
representative collection. One black-and-white domestic-looking sheep,
which I did not recognise, and which, unfortunately, had no name on its
pen, was almost as high at the withers as a fallow buck. There was also
a herd of the very curious, fat-tailed, white sheep with black heads
from Somaliland. Keeping to the left, we encounter no less than three
lion houses, all well filled. Next comes a monkey house, with large
outside cages of novel construction. The antelope houses have open-air
paddocks close by them, into which the animals are driven through
railed-off passages.
There were nylgai, gnus, _Oryx beisa_, and the rarely-seen _Oryx
addax_. One seldom sees the hartebeest antelope in captivity. There
are no fewer than eight different species of the genus _bubalis_,
and they are amongst the most common of the antelopes of the plains.
It is odd that they should be so seldom captured. When on the open
plains of North-east Africa, I saw hundreds upon hundreds of ‘Swayne’s
hartebeest,’ but so far no specimen of this antelope has been seen
alive in Europe. I never saw any very young calves, and my theory is
that the cows, when about to give birth, retreat either into very
thick bush or so far away from all caravan-tracks that they are seldom
encountered. Another common African animal never seen in captivity is
the African rhinoceros, which is much more plentiful than its cousin
the Indian rhino, which, on the other hand, is frequently met with in
captivity. It is, however, difficult to feed young rhinos. A baby one
requires every day the milk of at least fourteen goats in full milk.
A good few are caught, but seldom reach the coast alive, owing to
underfeeding. You cannot overfeed an elephant or rhinoceros, and great
cruelty is inflicted in some Gardens on the Continent by underfeeding
these large pachyderms, some of the elephants being wretchedly thin
and emaciated. In one case an enormous Indian elephant was receiving
four pounds of wheat-cake only a day. No wonder he had turned into the
savage brute he was.
But to return to the Vienna Garden. Opposite to a duck-pond were some
beautifully built aviaries; in fact, all the houses in this Garden are
good. Crane and ostrich pens follow, and then more aviaries for smaller
birds of great number and variety.
The Garden is arranged in a circle round a central parrot-house. The
visitor will be much struck by a particularly beautiful aviary for
wading-birds, well arranged and well devised. There was plenty of
grass, with tiny little houses dotted about, little trees to shelter
under, and little rivulets to wade about in. The birds in it really
looked happy, and I could have stood and watched them working and
playing in this quaint spot for an hour. In a large and clean-looking
house were three beautiful giraffes of the southern form, now so rare
in collections. These animals had a spacious outside paddock. Close by
were two Indian elephants in outside enclosures, and a young African
tusker. The collection of bears was remarkably complete. It was amusing
to watch the brown bears in their bath. In most Gardens the grizzlies
and others are not provided with bathing-tanks, but are housed in pits
or cages with drinking-water troughs only. This is somewhat unkind, for
brown bears, and black ones, too, love the water as much as polars do;
and on a hot day, if they have a tank, they will be found in it more
often than not.
Although this Garden is not large, it possesses a collection very
complete in many species of animals, which are housed in the best-built
and altogether the cleanest and best kept houses in any Zoological
Garden in Europe. The animals, as a natural consequence, look well and
happy, and many are bred in the Garden.