In February, 1876, the new lion house was finished, and the animals transferred to it without accident. The new building was 228 feet long, and contained fourteen dens, each of which could accommodate a pair of animals. To each den there were two inside compartments or sleeping dens. At the back of the building were day-rooms and sleeping-rooms for the keepers. The great event of the year was the arrival and deposit of the Prince of Wales’s collection from India, in charge of Mr. Clarence Bartlett, the assistant superintendent. This collection of sixty-five animals and eighty-six birds included, amongst others, five tigers, seven leopards, two bears, four Indian elephants, eight Indian antelopes, two zebus, seven deer, pigeons, partridges, francolins, pheasants, and ostriches. This great attraction raised the income of the Society in 1876 to £34,955, the admissions to the Gardens being 915,764. In 1877 the large summer cages outside the lion house were finished and opened. The animals were able to take air and exercise in them, and the visitors had much greater facilities for seeing them. In 1878 a young male hippopotamus was purchased for £800. In 1881 the last of the giraffes bred in the Gardens died. In 1882 the gayal bred (the first recorded instance in Europe). The tapirs bred for the first time in the Gardens. This year, ‘Jumbo,’ the great African elephant, was sold to Mr. Barnum, because it was considered unsafe to keep him any longer. The number of visitors was abnormally increased by the excitement caused by the Jumbo mania, and rose to the large number of 849,776, the second highest on record, having been only surpassed in 1876 (915,764), when the Prince of Wales’s Indian collection was on view. In 1883 the famous chimpanzee, ‘Sally,’ was purchased. In 1887 the great aviary for flying-birds was opened, and, although the birds were not put in till June, pairs of two species of ibis nested in some trees and reared their young. In 1889 Mr. Benjamin Misselbrook, who had filled the office of head-keeper for twenty-one years, retired after more than sixty years’ service in the employ of the Society. He died in 1893. In 1892 the male giraffe, acquired in 1879, died, the last survivor of the old stock. The Gardens were now, for the first time since the arrival of the original stock in 1836, without a representative of this animal. During that period thirty specimens had been exhibited, of which seventeen had been born in the Gardens and thirteen purchased. The total number of animals in the Gardens on December 31, 1892, was 2,413, showing an increase of 181 over the corresponding period of the previous year. In 1894 the white-tailed gnu bred for the first time, and a polar bear died after living in the Gardens for about twenty-three years.