Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/439

Rh every way that their tortured ursine minds can devise in these big rat-traps.

No one appreciates these facts more keenly than Dr. Frank Baker, the present superintendent of the gardens, and Mr. Blackburne, the head keeper—a big-hearted man who knows animals, and feels for them as though they were his own captured and caged relatives. But the fault does not altogether lie in any such quarter; for, were the necessary

amount appropriated by congress every year to make this park what it really should be, a credit to the American nation and an educational center of the greatest magnitude and importance, no such daily, hourly acts of cruelty would be perpetrated, and the kind of article I am now writing would never have been thought of, much less penned.

It is truly a marvel that so much has been accomplished at our "Zoo" with the meager means that the government allots for the purpose. This year $100,000 has been appropriated for the purchase of more land to be added to its present acreage, which is something,—a step in the right direction for the future; and were it backed up by half a million more, to be expended on what is now possessed and on its inhabitants, it surely would be a matter for national congratulation. But with salaries that would make a car conductor blush to receive; a third of the rare animals housed in hat-boxes: no aquaria or reptile house worthy of the name,—it's no wonder we are criticized. The idea of a park, a "zoo" like ours, with no photographic gallery, and no prosector or anatomical laboratory and work-rooms!

One of the grandest sights in our National Park at Washington is the great flying-cage for large-sized living birds. This immense wire structure is no less than 150 feet long, and 50 feet high and wide. I