The zoological gardens of Europe, their history and chief featuresPeel, C. V. A. (Charles Victor Alexander)
History
The zoological gardens of Europe, their history and chief features
Peel, C. V. A. (Charles Victor Alexander)
Zoos
There is a fine Indian rhinoceros, his attendant keeper on the occasion
of my visit being busily engaged in cleaning his hide and searching
for ticks, much to the delight of the great pachyderm. There was a
pair of hippopotami in a large bath, both females, which were born
in Antwerp. They were presented by M. Conrad. ‘Binding’ arrived when
quite young, and soon developed into a great mass of flesh and fat; and
whenever ‘Elizabeth’ opens her mouth wide, everybody falls backwards in
astonishment.
In another enclosure are two American tapirs. We next come to a really
imposing and lofty bird-of-prey aviary of very large proportions,
and then to the bear castle, with ivy running all over it. In a
neighbouring tank are some green cormorants, perched on little rocks.
Close by is a large enclosure for storks, cranes, stilts, gulls,
herons, and flamingoes.
The herons here, contrary to their usual habit, build their nests on
the ground and rear young ones every year. These birds are allowed full
liberty, for their wings are never cut, but they are, in spite of this,
very punctual to meals. One went away with the winter migration, but
came back at supper-time the following spring. Here is to be seen the
Goliath heron (_Ardea goliath_), rarely seen in confinement.
[Illustration: CAMEL AND LLAMA PENS, FRANKFORT-ON-MAIN.]
We now come to the antelope house, which contains quite a large herd of
black buck. I counted ten of these animals in one enclosure, including
two young ones. There is an _Oryx leucoryx_, an _Oryx beisa_, a number
of water-bucks, nylgai, and some brindled gnus, which have bred here
several times. There is an anoa from the Celebes, born in the Garden,
and a half-grown giraffe, for which the sum of 16,000 marks had
to be paid when it was about two years old. It is a specimen of the
Southern form; ‘South’ Africa gives one a wrong impression as to
its habitat. There are no giraffes now alive in ‘South’ Africa. The
Kalihari Desert is the most southern limit of the giraffe in Africa
to-day.
We now reach the deer sheds, containing wapiti, roe (many albinos),
red, fallow, rein, axis, sika from Japan, and deer from the Moluccas.
There are the inevitable herd of American bison, a fine collection of
llamas and alpacas, some camels, yaks, buffaloes, zebus, asses, and
Burchell’s zebras, an ant-eater near some very old elms, some giant
tortoises from the Galapagos, and the ever-present Shetland ponies.
The magnificent concert-house, which has been added to of late and
redecorated, contains the largest rooms in the city of Frankfort. Here
are given two concerts daily by the Garden’s own band of thirty-five
performers. In the summer two bands play. Ten special symphony concerts
are given each year.
In September, 1901, three giraffes, forty ostriches, seven lions, five
jaguars, black and ordinary leopards were exhibited, but the above have
now nearly all been sold.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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