Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/444

440 will have been more than well expended; for a world-wide known painter of animals is calculated to shed more real credit upon a nation than is an entire army of imported criminal good-for-nothings down in the east side of New York City or any other American city. All this likewise applies most forcibly to the nature classes we occasionally see at the Zoo,—the sculptor in search of correct poses of animals for his art; the scientific taxidermist; the artist and the biologist, and an hundred others of the classes that make up the great scientific, artistic and learned body of people of the country.

We must be patient, however, and all will come to pass in due time; even congress delights in making generous appropriations to national successes,—but to make the venture a veritable success, there's where the rub comes.

What we really need, in addition to what has already been put on foot at our National Park, is the establishment, on a broad basis, of a thoroughly equipped department of photography for the animals kept there, and what is even more important, a department of anatomy, with a recognized anatomist at its head. It should be his duty to make as complete a report as possible on the anatomy of every animal that dies at the park, and such reports should be fully illustrated and prepared for publication in any appropriate government avenue. There should also be a laboratory established for this purpose, and such material as came to the dissecting table worthy of preservation should, together with the skeleton of the animal, be sent to the National Museum for the department of comparative anatomy—a department that, at one time, was the envy of scientific Europe and the greatest possible credit to American science.