A CRITICISM OF THE ZOO
I.—SOME SPECIAL VIRTUES.
Zoo—to which we all pay the compliment of THE monosyllabic affection—has recently been selected as the target of many hard and some pointed missiles. A note of unconscious humour was added when one of the managers of the Underground Railways complained that " Monkey Hill " was overcrowded ! Now the Gardens were never so popular as to-day, and this popularity itself puts an extra, obligation on us all to exercise ourselves over the health and happiness of the captive animals. Further, London, as the one real metropolis of this globe, ought never to be provincial enough to shirk comparison with the best wherever found. Would visitors familiar (as the writer is) with the Bronx at New York, with the zoos at Sydney, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and the Paris Jardin find Regent's Park inferior and backward in essential details ?
We shall all grant certain merits to the London Zoo ; and it is a good principle to found any adverse criticism on the basis of acknowledged virtues. The spirit of expe- riment is very much in evidence and, for the first time in its annals, a woman's hand has been at the helm, or at the elbow of the steersman ; and she is a woman of genius. Miss Procter, who discovered a skill in keeping pets while yet in her cradle, is the artist-architect of that seductively caverned hill where the baboons are at home. They skip about the steps and plateaux, slip into the caves, repose in the light of the masked arc lamps with obvious natural, almost native, enjoyment. Miss Procter, who is peel', Early a specialist in. reptiles—and they have their own subtle psychology—has recently flown over to Holland to see the best existing_ reptile houses and to use her know.- ledge for the new house about to be built in Regent's Park. The reptiles will be installed before the monkeys, for the sufficient reason that their needs are better understood and rather more cheaply supplied. The pathology and hygiene of monkeys is in a more or less experimental stage; and the results of the small new experimental house are to be tested before any elaborate new installation is attempted. The experiment itself is model, and is scientifically ingenious. For many years the state of many of the marmosets and smaller monkeys, especially from Brazil, has been pitiable. They have sometimes lived tolerably long lives ; but they have never flourished. A great many of these monkeys in European zoos are consumptive or miserable. Their flaccid inactivity has been a grim contrast to their sprightly glee in the woods from which they, came.
We are going to change all that. The old idea was sim_ply to supply constant warmth in closed areas, but it is proved that this exclusion of cold is not half the battle. So in the new experimental house the categories of light, warmth and freslineis of air have 'all been considered afresh. For light, a part of the roof has been fitted with a specially manufactured 'glass, which • admits the ultra- violet rays. The monkeys will have the advantage of light treatment that perhaps will presently be used more and More for men and women. So-Called " vita glass " is a great therapeutic agent. When days are dark and short arc lamps, also designed to trans,rnit these particular rayS, are fixed under the roof. Since the globes cost £10 apiece, it may be • understood that theSe experiments are not made without cost.. For warmth the monkeys can eithek retire to inner rooms, by way of a simple valve or swinging door, or squat on warm shelves ranged along the roofed verandah. For the rest they are allowed the stimulus of acrobatic apparatus in the colder and fresher air that unadulterated London supplies. Remembering what a pitiable sight the marmosets used to be, and what they are now; I should say that the eiperiment was already a success. The choice of temperatures, the warmth of the shelves themselves,' the supply of ultra-violet rays have restored gaiety to these engaging and delicate animals, and indeed to their bigger cousins from the neighbourhood of the tropics. - Three considerable changes in the architecture of the Zoo have been 'planned, but they are to be consecutive not simultaneous. First is to come the new and more ample reptile house, designed by Miss Procter in associa- tion with the official architect. Next is to come the new parrot and bird house, and thirdly a very large monkey house where the latest discoveries in the influence of light and-heat are to be put in practice. The monkeys are to enjoy What the modem doctor says we ought all to enjoy—vita glass in the bedroom. Monkeys, .like men; have physical need of the ultra-violet rays that find no passage through the glass of commerce.
They are not, of course, the only rays that matter. Hundreds of lives have been prolonged in the Zoo by the use of mere gaslight and electric light. Once upon a time the smaller birds succumbed pitifully to mere hunger. They would only eat when it was light ; and in dark winter days the gap between supper and breakfast was too long for their constitution. So now an hour of light and feasting is interpolated at night time, and the life runs its proper course.
The reason why these and other lives were shortened was one of the many discoveries of a trained pathologist, whose services are retained ; and he is summoned in the case of most fatalities to make a post-mortem inves- tigation. Many years ago a West End physician cured a cage of monkeys of a consumptive malady, and in general perhaps the best doctors of men are the best doctors of animals.
On my last visit to the Zoo we met a black native from his own parts taking a little elephant out for a stroll, obviously enjoyed by both. A little further on we stopped to talk with a keeper, staggering under the weight of a tiger kitten, on its way to the exercise ground ; and it seemed to me then, as before, that no zoo has the advan- tage of such keepers. The knowledge and quiet zest of the men are incomparable. The young tiger racing up and down the long wire enclosure to keep as close as might be to his keeper was sign and symbol of this relationship. The Zoo is more than a peep-show. The animals in general arc not sacrificed to the public ; and for that reason it is a pleasant place to visit=may I say like London itself with one proviso. You must avoid the slums. Not all the houses- may compare with Baboons' Hill, or the Seals' Lakes or the Great Aviary of the Wading Birds Lagoon, or that epitome of genius in 'waterscapes, the new aquarium. With the slums, and their mending or ending, a second article must deal. W. B. T.
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