A grand entrance to the Gardens, to replace the present provisional one, is under consideration. On entering, one sees on the left the Grand Palais des Fêtes, opened in 1897 in the presence of His Majesty King Leopold II. The Palais, which cost 1,300,000 francs, contains a terrace and balcony, a restaurant, a café and billiard-rooms, a vast promenade, a marble saloon, a great concert-hall to seat 3,000, a vestibule and grand staircase, and a winter garden; and in three large rooms is a natural history museum. Opposite the Palais des Fêtes is a wide open space covered with seats grouped round a central band-stand. The collection of animals and birds in these Zoological Gardens is one of the finest in Europe, and the Gardens are especially famous for their hippopotami, which have frequently bred there. The first house we come to is the monkey house, with cleverly constructed doors to keep the draught out. Here is a specimen of the orang-outang from Borneo, a chacma, and a chimpanzee. We next come to the dairy, constructed in the ‘Renaissance flamandi’ style. The stalls contain twelve cows, which, before being brought in, are submitted to the ‘tuberculin’ test; if they pass it, their milk is certified free from all infectious germs. The price of milk is twenty cents the glass, ‘guaranteed pure and not skimmed.’ [Illustration: KANGAROO. (Photo by Ottomar Anschütz, Berlin)] We now come to prettily thatched kangaroo sheds, and in front of them is a duck-pond well stocked with ducks and swans. Next we find an ostrich and cassowary house, built in the Eastern style. Here I quite mistook the grunt of the ostrich for the dull roar or grunt of the lion, as I had often done before in the African jungle. Close at hand is a fine lofty bird-of-prey aviary. Outside nearly all the cages were coloured pictures of the birds, with a map of the world below them showing the distribution of each. Passing a small seal grotto and thatched house for llamas, we come to the Palais Egyptien, or elephant and giraffe house. The paintings on the outside walls represent the natives of foreign parts coming to offer to the city of Antwerp examples of the most characteristic animals of their country. This house contained four giraffes: one born in 1871, one in 1873, one in 1875, and one in 1876 (in 1897 the Society refused an offer of 25,000 francs for one); some camels, common and Burchell’s zebras, Indian and Sumatran rhinoceroses, and two Indian elephants. There is a stuffed giraffe, which died in 1898, after having been in the menagerie eighteen years, and the skeleton of an Indian elephant, which lived in the Gardens from 1852 to 1880. The bear dens are next to be seen, near a duck-pond, upon which were swimming hundreds of ducks. There are four polar bears housed near here. Passing the wapiti and moose yards, we come to a large aviary, outside which is a monument to Darwin. More than 100,000 pairs of birds are annually bought and sold in these Gardens.