at the late
Camille Flammarion was to astronomy, which is to say, its court jester
and reductio ad absurdum. When he leaps into public notice with some new
pearl of knowledge, it commonly turns out to be no more than the news
that Marie Bashkirtseff, the Russian lady walrus, has had her teeth
plugged with zinc and is expecting twins. Or that Pishposh, the
man-eating alligator, is down with locomotor ataxia. Or that Damon, the
grizzly, has just finished his brother Pythias in the tenth round,
chewing off his tail, nose and remaining ear.

Science, of course, has its uses for the lower animals. A diligent study
of their livers and lights helps to an understanding of the anatomy and
physiology, and particularly of the pathology, of man. They are
necessary aids in devising and manufacturing many remedial agents, and
in testing the virtues of those already devised; out of the mute agonies
of a rabbit or a calf may come relief for a baby with diphtheria, or
means for an archdeacon to escape the consequences of his youthful
follies. Moreover, something valuable is to be got out of a mere study
of their habits, instincts and ways of mind--knowledge that, by analogy,
may illuminate the parallel doings of the _genus homo_, and so enable us
to comprehend the primitive mental processes of Congressmen, morons and
the rev. clergy.

But it must be obvious that none of these studies can be made in a zoo.
The zoo animals, to begin with, provide no material for the biologist;
he can find out no more about their insides than what he discerns from a
safe distance and through the bars. He is not allowed to try his germs
and specifics upon them; he is not allowed to vivisect them. If he would
find out what goes on in the animal body under this condition or that,
he must turn from the inhabitants of the zoo to the customary guinea
pigs and street dogs, and buy or steal them for himself. Nor does he get
any chance for profitable inquiry when zoo animals die (usually of lack
of exercise or ignorant doctoring), for their carcasses are not handed
to him for autopsy, but at once stuffed with gypsum and excelsior and
placed in some museum.

Least of all do zoos produce any new knowledge about animal behavior.
Such knowledge must be got, not from animals penned up and tortured, but
from animals in a state of nature. A college professor studying the
habits of the giraffe, for example, and confining his observations to
specimens in zoos, would inev