CHAPTER XXIV
ZOOLOGISCHER GARTEN, POSEN, FOUNDED IN 1881: DIRECTOR, HERR JÄCKEL
After entering this Garden, I passed rows and rows of chairs and little tables in front of a large restaurant, but for a long time I was unable to find any animals. However, at length I saw a small gate, through which I passed, carefully refusing to look at a notice about photographs, lest I might be able to understand what I read. The first set of cages contained jackals and an amusing pair of Himalayan bears. The next house, a very old and dilapidated one, held black, brown, and polar bears, after which came the lion house, with large outdoor cages, containing a good collection. I had just succeeded in taking photographs of a few of the inmates, when a man appeared, and, by a good deal of talk and gesticulation made me to understand that photographing the animals was not allowed; so for the third time I was obliged to close the camera shutters.
There was an aquarium in a dark rockwork dungeon, but the number of fish in the tanks with cracked glass fronts was small. This dungeon seemed to contain a very miscellaneous collection; there was a stuffed ant-eater in a dark corner and some living mice in glass cases. In another glass case was a stuffed monkey, from the fur of which a tiny little mouse was busily engaged in making its nest. There were several cases of stuffed fish, a child’s perambulator, and an empty beer-bottle. That aquarium may be reckoned as one of the good old ‘has beens.’
In front of a duck-pond was a large house containing an Indian elephant, which consumed bags of bread, paper and all, with trumpets of immense delight; there was a black buck antelope with a broken horn, an inyala, also with a broken horn, an Indian tapir, a cassowary, a rhea, a pair of zebras, some kangaroos and donkeys. Opposite were wild-swine sheds, deer sheds, with a very good collection, and buffalo sheds. Next to these was a really good seal tank. There was a bird-of-prey aviary, and a monkey house, containing, amongst other animals, a beautiful black-and-white lemur. There were llama and camel sheds, a parrot and tropical small-birds’ aviary, and a burrowing-rodents’ house. Some dog-kennels contained pointers, Esquimaux dogs, a Russian wolf-hound, foxes, and wolves. In an open-air pen was a sedate marabou stork, which would catch bread thrown to it from a distance of ten yards, never allowing a single piece to touch the ground.
This Garden, although not large, has a remarkably good collection of animals. It seems a pity that the comparatively harmless photographer is barred, as every photograph taken in the Garden is a free advertisement.