Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/805

Rh in size; and thus excellent ventilation is secured for all time.

There are several highly important elements which should be paramount in the administration of the affairs of such an institution in order to insure its highest success and most healthy growth and usefulness. Chief among these is the matter of choice of the persons selected to constitute the staff of such a zoölogical garden as we have in mind. Next are the methods of confining and exhibiting the collection of animals of the place; the regulations controlling its sanitation and keeping; and provision of those steps which lead to the public and special workers deriving the greatest amount of benefit from it, in a purely educational point of view, incorporating here the subservience of Science in her diverse ends and means.

In the spring of this year (1888), the Zoölogical Society of London, in addition to its regular staff of officers, employed the following persons: one superintendent, one assistant superintendent, one head keeper, six keepers (first class), ten keepers (second class), eight keepers (third class), three money-takers, one storekeeper, one cook, one office-clerk, one prosector's assistant, one head gardener, nineteen helpers in the menagerie, ten garden laborers, seven artisans, two painters, six laborers, one butcher, two firemen, two night watchmen, and one time-keeper—making a whole force of about eighty-five people, the duties of whom are sufficiently suggested by their designations. It is hardly necessary to say that the gentlemen composing the staff of officers should be selected not only for their executive ability in the departments they severally fill, but likewise for their distinction in some branch of zoölogical science, and more especially vertebrate zoölogy. Of that part of the staff which has just been enumerated above, especial regard should be paid to the selection of the keepers, who should be men fond of animals and their care, gentle and patient, and otherwise particularly fitted for their employment.

A great deal depends upon the various methods adopted of exhibiting the different mammals, birds, and reptiles in the collection, not only so far as the comfort of these is concerned, but the amount of instruction and benefit we derive from the several plans employed. For instance, it would hardly be considered advisable to keep specimens of the Rocky Mountain goat (Mazama) within an inclosure wherein the ground was a dead level, and specimens of the prong-horn antelope (Antilocapra) in another inclosure wherein a rocky hillock of some considerable dimensions might exist: for, in the first instance, the animal would not only be unhappy in his quarters, but would be made incapable of exhibiting a number of his natural traits; while a mass of rocks