ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS

areas set aside for the exhibition of living animals, which may represent in the main the wild fauna of the country in which the garden is situated, or may afford a consensus of the animal life of the world. Z. g's, besides affording spectacular show, offer the only means of studying the development and habits of many kinds of wild creatures, and give to the artist otherwise unattainable opportunities of sketching life poses and movements. In the older gardens, erected often in crowded areas of large cities, i was the custom to exhibit the inmates ir pens or cages scarcely larger than was nece ary to give the moving room, but a new development endeayors to place each creature in its own appropriate natural setting. The great natural reservations of wild animals in America and Africa display the ideal of a national zoological garden on an infinitely grand scale. *science, account’), the comprehensive science which deals with animals and their lives. Along with the science of plants—Botany—it forms the great Science of life—Biology. The study of animals must have been one of the earliest to which man, almost unconsciously, turned his attention, for the nece ities of finding food must have determined that he who best acquainted himself with the habits of deer or of wild ox became the most efficient and most prosperous hunter. The accuracy and acutene of the observations of prehistoric man are amply proved by the relics still left to us in cave pictures, and in the wonderful carved bones and antlers from the caves of Vasére and Dordogne, whereon are depicted fishes, birds, ponies, and even the mammoth, the last scratched on the ivory of the great creature’s tusks. This period of random and haphazard observation, which continued for long ages, was succeeded by a cla ical period when zoology first became the object of systematic study. Its greatest representatives were ARISTOTLE (384-322 38.c.), the ‘father of natural history,’ who, during a comparatively short residence on the igean coast, began observations which resulted in the description of some 500 different animals; and PLINTY THE criminately all manner of current an Following the Cla ical Period came a period of decline—the Legendary Period —when absurd scraps of folklore and impo ible travelers’ tales pa ed as current z. Typical of this period are the volumes of allegorical stories known as Bestiaries, and the more or le symbolical figures of animals sculptured by the early Christians on standing stones scattered throughout the north-eastern areas of Scotland. It was not till the Renai ance and the invention of printing in the XV. cent. that a period of revival was initiated which iaid the foundations of present day z. Fact and fancy were still inextricably mixed, but the keynote of the revival was an earnest attempt at fresh and first-hand investigation. 8o succe ful has this search after knowledge been that the facts of z. have become too many for any single man to compa , and accordingly the science has been split into several branches each dealing especially with a particular aspect of animal life. Thus we have Emprrotoay dealing with the early stages in development; MorpnoLoey with crude structure, the forms of animals; Histo.oay, with the fine structures of cell ti ues; Puysrotogy with the internal workings of animals; PAL HON TO LOGY (q.v.), Or more strictly palaeozcology, with etheir fo ilised remains; Bionomics, with their habits; and Ecology, with their life relationships to their neighbors cr environment; while the great branch which endeavors to arrange animals in natural groups, cla ify them, is known as SysTEMaTIC Z. But there is a constant interchange between these many branches, for none is independent of the others, and all are involved in the theoretical unities of zoological facts, which are sometimes included in the term ‘philosophic z.’ Mention must also be made of the latest advance of the science—the rapid development of Economic Z.—a branch especially valuable in that it is concerned with animal life only so far as this relates to the welfare of man. - village, Brandenburg, Pru ia; scene of defeat of Ru ians by Pru ians, 1758.