Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/809

Rh should be adopted to point out the animals belonging to the country in which the garden is maintained. The system of labeling will do much toward this if carried out as suggested on a previous page; and if keepers and others are intelligent and obliging, as they surely should be, they can accomplish a great deal in a few words to groups of inquiring visitors.

Many questions touching upon special details in administration—as the best means to be adopted to secure desirable acquisitions to the garden, to the methods of exchange, of contracts for food, and similar matters, and whether or not it is desirable to make a small charge to visitors as an entrance-fee—hardly fall within the scope of the present article to discuss.

Modern architecture and artisanship, and present-day knowledge of sanitary engineering and sanitation, with our ever-increasing literature upon the diseases and their treatment in the lower animals, all leave but little to be desired for a superintendent of a zoölogical garden to draw upon for the application of their principles to the institution under his charge. If means be ample, there is not the shadow of excuse why such a place may not be made as inviting as the "gardens of the gods," and cleanliness and purity completely carried out.

One main building always constitutes an inseparable part of a model zoölogical garden, and it is devoted to the offices and study-rooms of the staff, to the lecture-room, to the reading-room and library, to the photographic gallery, to the laboratories and storerooms, and, finally, to a few spare rooms for special purposes.

The lecture-room should be properly fitted up, and made to accommodate a large audience. Here, at certain seasons, a course of free lectures should be delivered on some branch of zoölogy or zoötomy, either by some resident member of the staff, or by specialists.

No well-appointed zoölogical building in connection with a garden would be complete without its reading-room and library. In the latter should be found, in time, all the standard works that have appeared upon the various branches of natural science, and more particularly upon vertebrate zoology and morphology, including, of course, such subjects as classification and geographical distribution of animals, and the reports of other zoölogical gardens and societies. On the reading-tables should appear the various authoritative zoölogical periodicals of the day, and bound volumes of the same should be upon the library shelves. It is an excellent idea to have the walls of such a room as this hung with strong relief maps of the various parts of the world, upon which are portrayed by clear defining lines the several regions as they are described by zoögraphers, showing the natural geographical distribution of animals. Within these areas there might be