PROGRESS AT WHIPSNADE.
The evolution of Whipsnade into the Zoo of the future moves apace. When some of us first visited the place many years ago, before it was so much as fenced, what most struck the imagination was the natural dips in the chalk. It seemed that an engineer could very simply deepen such hollows and cut others so that they would make barless cages. There was the opportunity to contrive homes either with chalk walls or cut off by chalk crevasses. Some of these hollows were at once used for smaller mammals, such as wombats, and the most engaging gophirs, which I found more amusing to watch in the Canadian Selkirks even than the grizzly bear. But the larger natural enclosure, more or less on the Hagenbeek model, was not seen ; and though the general conversion of the place was more ingenious in plan and more attractive in result than we bad imagined, there remained a certain dis- appointment at the absence of the dens we had imagined. '
* * S *
Previous page
