One Hundred Years of the ‘ Zoo’

Abstract

BY its ‘ Zoo’ is the Zoological Society of London known to the people; its zoological gardens have given it a hold upon the nation which no purely scientific activity could have gained; and the progress of the Zoo is the touchstone by which its success will be tested, at any rate by the super ficial. Yet from the outset of its career two distinct and almost antagonistic aims lay at the hearts of the founders of the Zoological Society and were embodied in its charter: on one hand the popular appeal of the introduction of “new and curious subjects of the Animal Kingdom”, and on the other the sternly scientific “advancement of Zoology and Animal Physiology”. It is perhaps the greatest triumph of its hundred years of exist ence that the Society has cherished these two objects with equal favour, developing its gardens to their utmost limits and at the same time making vast contributions to the progress of knowledge. It has done more; it has blended a double function which might have split the Society to its roots into a harmonious whole, so that the Zoo has become the patron of science, contributing handsomely to its coffers, and science, the handmaiden of the Zoo, has eased the conditions of its inmates, and furthered their welfare in the details which make life in captivity worth living.

Centenary History of the Zoological Society of London.

By P. Chalmers Mitchell. Pp. xi + 307 + 33 plates + 9 plans. (London: Zoological Society of London, 1929.) 25s.