A CAGELESS ZOO.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1707, 26 March 1913, Page 10

A CAGELESS ZOO.

Great changes aro contemplated at the famous Regent I'ark Zoological Gardens, based 011 the idea of keeping wild animals

111 captivity without cages. Mr. J. Newton Mappin, the head of the firm of Mappin and Webb, has promised (says tlie "Spectator") to defray the cost of ,erecting a series of rockwork terraces 011 which various animals may bo placed and exhibited to the public without the intervention of bars. These ■ aro to be called the Mappin Terraces, and will go far towards making the London Zoological Society's the most interesting and attractive of all existing collections of animals.

The general idea of the terraoes is that they should form 'a series of tiers in the form of a quadrant. The highest tier, at the' back, 'is to be a. crescent of rockwork, rising into four peaks. Here there will bo goats, sheep, and chainois—goats and chamois, perhaps, which will jump from rock to.rock as easily and as naturally as if they were at home in the Alps or the Himalayas. Running along under this rockwork there' will be a terrace for visitors, who will look up'at the peaks on one side, and on the other will look down on another tier of rockwork planned in enclosures for bears. Each enclosure will have a pond and caves, and perhaps with these new enclosures it may at last bo found possible to take the rest of the bears away from the dingy dei6'thcy occupy at present under tlie old terrace and give to all of them what already has been given to the Polar bears and the young brown' and Malay bears, room to move . about and water to bathe in. The Manchurian bear in particular, who gets his name of piscator from his fondness for salmon, will surely find life better wflrtli liviug with a pond; could ho not,. perhaps, be given some Ash to catch?. Underneath tho tier of bear en' closures will rim another terrace, and this will bo separated from the rockwork above it, not bv bars, but by a deep ditch, so that for the first time visitors to tlie gardens will find themselves separated by merely a few feet of empty air from sloth bears and grizzlies/ The comments of a Bank Holiday crowd should bo nvortli listening to. Below this second terrace will be paddocks for deer, a large lawn, and a pond, and the whole series of terraces and rockwork will be visible from a tea pavilion, which is to bo erected at the apex of tho quadrant. Everything will bo designed so as to place tho animals in surroundings as nearly as possible resembling their native haunts; and in this respect tho terraces will be the greatest addition to tho gardens since the foundation of the society. But the terraces will not be merely ornamental. The structure is to bo of steel and concrete, and its hollow interior will provide space for a number of tho service departments at present scattered through the gardens. Tho thought has in it'll thrill of romance. Abovo the heads of men sorting packages or doing accounts will prowl the leopard and the lion. Below tho paws of tho grizzly, and within hearing of his growls, a girl will be engaged in gumming paper .bags for nuts and crusts. There has bct'n nothing like it—if we except Ifcrimm Melville's description of how the whaler of Nantucket sleeps on the bosom of the ocean, "wliilo under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales."

It is, of course, merely considerations of cost and space which prevent tho Zoological Society from developing, the gardens to a< much larger extent on modern scientific linos. There aro many houses and enclosures, some of them comparatively new, which could be improved out of existence to show the animals which they contain as they should be shown. The lion-house, for instance,' is built on wrong principles altogether. I|; was designed with the-idea that lions and tigers i|eed a healed atmosphere to keep them healthy, which has been proved not to be the case. Tho lion-house might well he pulled down, and instead of.it there could be roclcwork designed on the same plan as tho bears' enclosures in tho Mappin Terraces. The lions would bo separated from visitors merely by an nnjmnpable ditch; there would no no need for bars, and the creatures could be watched walking over rock and sand, or sleeping iu the sun or the shade ol' a euve—a icclieii of Xubia or Uganda dumped into Loudon wid-wiutcr.