LONDON ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 224, 18 June 1929, Page 10

LONDON ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS

CENTENARY YEAR Dominion Special Service. London, May 4. ? The Zoological Society has every reason to be well satisfied with the great advances it has made since its establishment 100 years ago. Of late years science has been brought to bear on many problems arising in the housing and treatment of wild animals, and the installations at Regent’s Park rank as models for zoological collections everywhere. In contrast to some of the more up-to-date houses, such as the reptile and monkey houses, which are run entirely by electricity, there are still in use some buildings which were erected in the Zoo’s very earliest days and have remained almost unchanged even to-day. The camel house, built for llamas in 1829, and the little ravens’ cage behind it, which did duty as a parrot house at about the same date, together with the tunnel connecting the south and middle gardens, are three links with the earliest history of the society. In the year in which those buildings were constructed the number of visitors to the gardens did not reach 100,000. Last year the total exceeded 2,250,000, the highest figure ever recorded. A few years after the Zoo was formed a farm in the country near Kingston was acquired as a sanatorium for sick animals, and a general home of rest. This was given up some years later owing to lack of funds. The idea of the Kingston farm, however, has recently been revived, and the development of the new zoo at Whlpsnade Park is now well in hand. An ambitious scheme of panoramas and open-air terraces has been outlined, and already planting, roadmaking and the excavation of terraces are in progress. The park itself is 50 acres in extent, and when complete it will be the largest of its kind in the world.