LONDON ZOO'S OLDEST INHABITANT.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 191, 7 May 1908, Page 8

LONDON ZOO'S OLDEST INHABITANT.

■.. DEATH OF "GUY FAAVKES." Tho London Zoo has lost its , oldest inhabitant. Guy Fawkes, the famous hippopotamus, who obtained hor name, in defiance of her box, from the fact that her birthday was November 5, has died of senile decay in her indoor tank. Mr. R. .T. Pococb, the superintendent of the Gardens, told an- "Express" representative that Guy Fawkes died of old age, after seeming out of sorts and neglecting her meals for about a week. The cause of death was determined by a post-mortem examination. Guy Fawkes's almost submerged form in slumbrous ease in her pond was a familiar spectaclo during the hot summer days, and not at first sight to be easily recognised as an animal at all. Only the flat of her armourplated back, her warty snout, and her globular eves showed above the water for liours together. It only needed the addition of a periscope to complete her resomblance to a submarine. She was born in the Zoo on November 5, 1872, and was thus in her thirty-sixth year. Tho A r iceroy of Egypt presented a malo hippo to the Zoological Society in the year 1850, and augmented his.gift .with'a female three years later. Both of them lived at Regent's Park for twenty-eight years, and there tliey became the. parents of Guy Fawkes. Neither parent lived as long as the venerable Guy Fawkes, over whose baby days there was trouble and anxiety, and it was partly to commomorate the successful rearing of tho baby hippo that, in December, 18727 Mr. A. D. Bartlott, tho late superintendent of the Gardens, was presented with tho Zoological Society's silver medal. Guy Fawkes's place in tho Zoo will bo, hard to fill. There are three young hippos there at present, but two of them aro not in robust health. The oldest inhabitant now in tho Gardens is Sulfa Culli, the Indian elephant brought homo by King Edward in 1876. Tho next oldest —there being only a few months' difference between the two—is an alligator in tho Reptile House.