GARDENS OF THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY, LONDON
This Zoological Society was formed in 1826, and Sir Stamford Raffles
was elected President, Mr. Joseph Sabine Treasurer, and Mr. Nicholas
Vigors Secretary. The sum of £5,000 was appropriated for the Gardens
in Regent’s Park, the plans of which, prepared by Decimus Burton, were
approved. In 1828 the Gardens and a Museum were opened to the public on
payment.
The most important event of the year 1829 was the grant on March 27 of
a charter to the Society by His Majesty King George IV. The Marquess of
Lansdowne, Mr. Joseph Sabine, and Mr. Nicholas Vigors were named in it
as the first President, Treasurer, and Secretary respectively of the
incorporated Society. More land was acquired north of the Garden in
Regent’s Park, and a tunnel was built connecting the two gardens. The
number of Fellows that year was 1,528, and 189,913 people visited the
Gardens.
The principal works executed in 1830 were the laying out of the North
Garden and the erection there of houses and sheds for deer, antelopes,
zebras, ostriches, kangaroos, and swine. In the South Garden a pit with
a pond was provided for the polar bear, and a den and pond were made
for seals.
His Majesty King William IV. signified his pleasure to become the
Patron of the Society, and presented to it all the animals belonging to
the royal menagerie in Windsor Park. This collection included fourteen
wapiti, seven zebus, two mountain zebras, two Burchell’s zebras, and
thirteen kangaroos, besides other animals and a valuable collection of
birds.
In 1831 the King presented to the Society the collection of animals in
the Tower. The armadillos bred in the Gardens. An elephant paddock and
pond were erected.
In 1833 a parrot house was erected.
In 1834 an additional space of ten acres of ground along the
south-western verge of the South Garden was acquired. Examples of
twelve species of mammals and twenty-six species of birds were
exhibited for the first time. Of the former the most important was an
Indian rhinoceros, for which the sum of £1,050 was paid.
In 1835 a house was built for elephants and rhinoceros in the North
Garden, near the spot where the present elephant house now stands. His
Majesty the King presented to the Society a fine young Indian elephant.
On May 24, 1836, four giraffes (three males and a female) arrived at
the Gardens in charge of M. Thibaut, who had obtained them for the
Society in Kordofan. They were the origin of the famous herd which died
out in 1881. Of the seventeen giraffes of this herd subsequently born
in the Gardens, one was presented to the Dublin Society in 1844, five
were sold at prices ranging from £150 to £450, and eleven died in the
Gardens.
In 1836 a giraffe house was erected.
In 1837 Her Majesty Queen Victoria signified her pleasure to become
Patroness of the Society. An orang-outang was purchased for £100, and a
cage was put up for it.
On June 19, 1839, a young male giraffe was born, the first recorded
instance of this species breeding in captivity, but it died nine days
after.
On May 27, 1841, a young male giraffe was born, the first ever reared
in captivity.
In 1843 a new carnivora terrace was completed. Jenny, the orang, died.
In 1844 a polar-bears’ den and bath were erected.
In 1846 the largest of the giraffes died, having been upwards of eleven
years in confinement.
In 1850 a young hippopotamus was presented to the Society by Abbas
Pasha.
In 1851, by bequest from the late President, the Earl of Derby, the
Society acquired the herd of elands (two males and three females) which
was the origin of the Society’s stock of this important animal.
In 1852 His Royal Highness Prince Albert was President. The drainage of
the Gardens, begun in 1851, was completed. A python house, a chimpanzee
house, and an aquatic vivarium were made. A Red River hog was obtained.
In 1854 the hippopotamus house, with a large bath and massive iron
railings, was completed. The most important addition was the female
hippopotamus, Adhela, presented by the Pasha of Egypt. The Society now
possessed a pair of these huge pachyderms. These animals bred in 1872,
and the female is still living (1902) in the Gardens.
In 1857 a collection of Himalayan pheasants arrived.
In 1859 Mr. (now Dr.) Philip Lutley Sclater, M.A., was elected
secretary of the Society, and he still fills that onerous post with
distinction to-day.
In 1861 the deer sheds in the North Garden were rebuilt, and the larger
antelopes were removed to the new house in the South Garden. Two eland
fawns were born, making a total of twenty since the bequest in 1851.
On December 14 the Prince Consort, President of the Society, died at
Windsor.
In 1862 Sir George Clark was elected President of the Society. A
pheasantry and kangaroo sheds were built.
In 1863 cattle-sheds and a new monkey house were constructed.
In June, 1865, the first African elephant ever seen alive in England
was received (in exchange for an Indian rhinoceros) from the Jardin des
Plantes, Paris. This was the famous Jumbo, and in September a female of
the same species (Alice) was purchased.
In 1866 a fire broke out in the giraffe house, which suffocated a
female giraffe and her fawn. In the winter of 1866 a heavy snowstorm
destroyed the covering of the pheasantry. The birds (many of which were
worth £50 each) escaped into the park, but were mostly recovered.
In 1867 a young male walrus, brought to Dundee from Davis Straits by a
steam whaler, was purchased, but did not live long.
[Illustration: HIPPOPOTAMI, LONDON.]
The list of donors in 1868 was long, and was headed by the Prince of
Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh. An African two-horned rhinoceros,
captured in Upper Nubia, was purchased from Herr Carl Hagenbeck,
of Hamburg. This was believed to be the first specimen of an African
rhinoceros received alive in Europe since the days of the Romans.
Lecomte returned from the Falkland Islands with a few animals and
birds, upwards of eighty specimens having died on the voyage.
In 1869 the new elephant house was completed, and contained two African
elephants, two Indian elephants, two Indian rhinoceroses, one African
rhinoceros, one American tapir, the first and most complete series of
the larger order of pachyderms ever brought together in Europe.
[Illustration: LION, LONDON.]
In 1871 a hippopotamus was born in the Gardens, but lived only two days.
In 1872 a bridge was constructed over the Regent’s Park Canal,
connecting the new grounds on its north bank with the southern gardens.
Two hippopotami were born, one of which, however, died; the other,
reared by its dam, is still alive in the Gardens.
On October 2, 1874, an explosion took place in a boat loaded with
gunpowder on the canal near the Gardens, causing great damage to some
of the aviaries and other buildings.
In February, 1876, the new lion house was finished, and the animals
transferred to it without accident. The new building was 228 feet long,
and contained fourteen dens, each of which could accommodate a pair of
animals. To each den there were two inside compartments or sleeping
dens. At the back of the building were day-rooms and sleeping-rooms for
the keepers. The great event of the year was the arrival and deposit
of the Prince of Wales’s collection from India, in charge of Mr.
Clarence Bartlett, the assistant superintendent. This collection of
sixty-five animals and eighty-six birds included, amongst others, five
tigers, seven leopards, two bears, four Indian elephants, eight Indian
antelopes, two zebus, seven deer, pigeons, partridges, francolins,
pheasants, and ostriches. This great attraction raised the income of
the Society in 1876 to £34,955, the admissions to the Gardens being
915,764.
In 1877 the large summer cages outside the lion house were finished and
opened. The animals were able to take air and exercise in them, and the
visitors had much greater facilities for seeing them.
In 1878 a young male hippopotamus was purchased for £800.
In 1881 the last of the giraffes bred in the Gardens died.
In 1882 the gayal bred (the first recorded instance in Europe). The
tapirs bred for the first time in the Gardens. This year, ‘Jumbo,’
the great African elephant, was sold to Mr. Barnum, because it was
considered unsafe to keep him any longer. The number of visitors was
abnormally increased by the excitement caused by the Jumbo mania, and
rose to the large number of 849,776, the second highest on record,
having been only surpassed in 1876 (915,764), when the Prince of
Wales’s Indian collection was on view.
In 1883 the famous chimpanzee, ‘Sally,’ was purchased.
In 1887 the great aviary for flying-birds was opened, and, although the
birds were not put in till June, pairs of two species of ibis nested in
some trees and reared their young.
In 1889 Mr. Benjamin Misselbrook, who had filled the office of
head-keeper for twenty-one years, retired after more than sixty years’
service in the employ of the Society. He died in 1893.
In 1892 the male giraffe, acquired in 1879, died, the last survivor
of the old stock. The Gardens were now, for the first time since the
arrival of the original stock in 1836, without a representative of this
animal. During that period thirty specimens had been exhibited, of
which seventeen had been born in the Gardens and thirteen purchased.
The total number of animals in the Gardens on December 31, 1892, was
2,413, showing an increase of 181 over the corresponding period of the
previous year.
In 1894 the white-tailed gnu bred for the first time, and a polar bear
died after living in the Gardens for about twenty-three years.
In 1895 the new scheme for the drainage of the Society’s grounds,
planned in 1894, was brought to a satisfactory conclusion. The first
example of the Southern form of giraffe was exhibited. Other important
additions were a pair of brindled gnus and a pair of sable antelopes.
Seth Sutton, after nearly forty years’ service as keeper, retired on a
pension.
In 1896 ‘Jung Pershad,’ the Indian elephant deposited by the Prince of
Wales in 1876, died.
In 1897 the new ostrich and crane houses were completed at a total
cost of £3,383; the new tortoise house adjoining the reptile house was
also finished at a cost of £464. A giraffe, sent as a present to Queen
Victoria by the Chief Bathoen of Bechuanaland, died almost as soon as
it had been received at the Gardens.
In 1899 the new zebra house was finished at a cost of about £1,100.
The Emperor Menelik of Abyssinia presented Queen Victoria with a pair
of Grévy’s zebras, which were deposited in this house. Besides these
fine animals, the series of equides in the Gardens then comprised one
African wild ass, one Somali wild ass, two onagers, one kiang, six
Burchell’s zebras, two mountain zebras.
In 1900 the brindled gnu bred, the first instance recorded in the
Gardens. The Society’s income amounted to £28,772, the number of
Fellows was 3,250, and the admissions to the Gardens were 697,178.
In 1901 certain persons raised charges against the Society, complaining
of the inadequate and unwholesome housing of some of the animals in the
Gardens. They endeavoured to advertise their grievances in the cheap
newspapers; but the charges were ably met and unanimously condemned at
a meeting of the Society, the Duke of Bedford (President) being in the
chair.
[Illustration: GRÉVY’S ZEBRA, LONDON.]
In 1902 the young male giraffe (Southern form) died. The following
animals were deposited by His Majesty the King, who received them as a
Coronation gift from the Emperor Menelik of Abyssinia: five lion cubs
(one male and four females) and two Grévy’s zebras (females). Colonel
Mahon presented a young male and a female giraffe of the Northern form,
the first imported from Kordofan to this country for nearly thirty
years.
Admission: adults, one shilling; children, sixpence.
Secretary: Dr. P. L. Sclater.
Superintendent: Mr. Clarence Bartlett.
These Gardens are so well known to us that only a short description of
a walk round will be necessary. They occupy at the present time an area
of about thirty-one acres in the Regent’s Park. The Gardens are divided
by the Inner Circle and the Regent’s Canal into three portions, known
as the South Garden, the Middle Garden, and the North Garden.
Entering by the main entrance and turning as usual _to the left_, we
reach the eastern aviary and the northern pond. Passing some llama
pens and turning again to the left, a tunnel leads to some of the most
important houses in the Gardens. After the parrot house, containing a
very rich collection, we find the elephant house, which contains some
remarkable animals--Indian and African elephants, Sumatran rhinos and
Indian rhinos. This house has large open-air paddocks with water-tanks.
‘Jingo,’ the big African elephant, has been in the Gardens since 1882.
We now come to Houses Nos. 60 and 61, containing the hippopotami and
giraffes respectively. At the present time (July, 1902) there are two
hippopotami, one giraffe of the Southern form, acquired in 1895, and
two giraffes of the Northern form, just added.
We next come to the wild asses and zebras, which form a series having
no rival in Europe. Here are to be seen specimens of all the four known
zebras--Burchell’s, Grévy’s, Grant’s, and the mountain zebra--besides
the onager, the kiang, the Egyptian wild ass, and the Somali wild ass,
the last with legs striped like those of a zebra.
Passing the moose yard and retracing our steps, we come to the canal
bridge, and after crossing it we are confronted with the northern
aviary, pheasantries, and the insect house, in the last of which is
to be seen (and felt) an electric eel, which kills or stuns with an
electric shock the tiny fish thrown into its tank before it eats them.
There are also some amusing talking-birds in this house.
Passing over the bridge again, we come on the left to the small-cats’
house and the kangaroo sheds. Australians saw here for the first time
kangaroos with young ones in their pouches, which shows how well they
are treated here.
Again passing through the tunnel, we come to the band-stand and the
platform from which children mount the elephant. These elephant and
camel rides are extremely popular forms of amusement in the Gardens,
as may be judged from the money receipts: in 1900 no less than £624
13s. 11d. was taken. Close by is to be found a beautiful specimen
of the snow leopard, captured in Thibet by my friend, Captain H. I.
Nicholl, and presented by him to the Society. After lunch in House No.
38 (the refreshment-room), we find on the left the vultures’ aviary,
and, crossing a lawn, we come to the fish house, the three-island pond,
and the large central lawn, the latter a pretty sight on a fine Sunday
afternoon, when covered with fashionably-dressed visitors.
Passing the wapiti and deer and cattle sheds, we reach the reptile
house. Here the experiments of Sir Joseph Fayrer demonstrated the
venomous character of the heloderm lizard. In this house have been
exhibited the largest pythons ever seen. Of the first living specimens
of the Chinese alligator sent to Europe many years ago, one still
survives, and the giant tortoises deposited by that great naturalist,
the Hon. Walter Rothschild, could not be matched in the Galapagos or
Aldabra.
We now come to the lion house, which cost, with its outside cages,
upwards of £11,000. There is always a good collection of the big cats
to be seen, but they do not breed well here.
Just opposite is the splendid collection of antelopes, in my
opinion the most valuable animals in the Gardens. Not such a fine
representative lot can be seen elsewhere in Europe. Many breed here,
and the gnus and elands take turns at grazing on the large grass
paddock attached to the house. In the loose-boxes will be noticed
sable, harnessed antelopes, the nylgais (remarkably tame), common
water-buck, _Oryx leucoryx_, and an _Oryx beisa_, captured and
presented by my friend and African-travel companion, Mr. J. Bennett
Stanford. We now come to the sea-lion pond and those quaint-looking
birds the penguins, which stalk about for all the world like wise
little old men and women. Passing more duck-ponds, we reach the crane
and ostrich pens. Mr. Walter Rothschild’s monograph on the cassowaries
was in great measure founded on examples deposited by him in this
house. Here also are seen the rheas, the wingless kiwi, and the
magnificent Manchurian cranes.
The monkey house comes next, containing a fine collection, and
opposite is a new house, costing £4,000, for the reception of the
anthropoid apes.
Passing the western aviary, we come to the bears’ and hyænas’ dens,
always well filled. The camel house and clock-tower come next, and then
a large aviary containing storks, herons, gulls, etc., many of which
build and rear their young. The pelican enclosure brings one to the
main entrance again.
[Illustration: SABLE ANTELOPE, LONDON.]
In this large Garden there are no less than sixty houses, and in the
above account of a walk round many small houses and enclosures have
been passed over, but not forgotten. The number of visitors on a fine
Bank Holiday is 29,000, or about half the visitors to the Berlin
Garden on a fine Sunday evening. The cause of this is that we close
our Gardens at an hour when those on the Continent make most of their
money. We also give no concerts and have no concert-house, although a
military band plays from 4 to 6 p.m. on Saturdays throughout the summer.
[Illustration: STRIPED HYÆNA, LONDON.]
To give some idea of the provisions required by the 2,865 or so
animals, birds, and reptiles in the Gardens, it may be mentioned that
in 1901 there were consumed, besides many other items, 153 loads of
clover, 238 loads of straw, 144 loads of hay, 185 quarters of oats,
34 quarters of barley, 39 quarters of wheat, 197 quarters of bran,
24 quarters of canary seed, 48 cwt. rice, 60 cwt. oil-cake, 6,262
quarterns bread, 5,086 quarts fresh milk, 303 cwt. of biscuit, 33,300
eggs, 341 horses (weighing 104 tons), 252 goats, 2,178 lb. flounders,
29,120 lb. whiting, 9,530 fowl heads, 6,030 bunches of greens, 1,306
dozen bananas, 36 cwt. monkey-nuts, 342 dozen lettuces.
In Mr. Clarence Bartlett the Zoological Society is lucky in possessing
a thoroughly practical and clever man as superintendent, and in Dr.
Philip Lutley Sclater, M.A., Ph.D., F.R.S., etc., the Society possesses
as Secretary one of the most energetic, learned, and distinguished
of zoologists in Europe. No wonder, then, that with such men at its
head, and under the Presidency of His Grace the Duke of Bedford, this
Garden has remained, and will remain, one of the best managed, the most
healthy, and one of the richest in Europe.