The elephant house, with large open-air enclosures, no longer contains ‘Betsy,’ the great female elephant, which has just died; whilst another male Indian elephant has been killed, as he was becoming dangerous. To-day only ‘Fanny’ (who came ten years ago), and a small African elephant, just acquired, are to be found.
There is a fine Indian rhinoceros, his attendant keeper on the occasion of my visit being busily engaged in cleaning his hide and searching for ticks, much to the delight of the great pachyderm. There was a pair of hippopotami in a large bath, both females, which were born in Antwerp. They were presented by M. Conrad. ‘Binding’ arrived when quite young, and soon developed into a great mass of flesh and fat; and whenever ‘Elizabeth’ opens her mouth wide, everybody falls backwards in astonishment.
In another enclosure are two American tapirs. We next come to a really imposing and lofty bird-of-prey aviary of very large proportions, and then to the bear castle, with ivy running all over it. In a neighbouring tank are some green cormorants, perched on little rocks. Close by is a large enclosure for storks, cranes, stilts, gulls, herons, and flamingoes.
The herons here, contrary to their usual habit, build their nests on the ground and rear young ones every year. These birds are allowed full liberty, for their wings are never cut, but they are, in spite of this, very punctual to meals. One went away with the winter migration, but came back at supper-time the following spring. Here is to be seen the Goliath heron (Ardea goliath), rarely seen in confinement.
CAMEL AND LLAMA PENS, FRANKFORT-ON-MAIN.
We now come to the antelope house, which contains quite a large herd of black buck. I counted ten of these animals in one enclosure, including two young ones. There is an Oryx leucoryx, an Oryx beisa, a number of water-bucks, nylgai, and some brindled gnus, which have bred here several times. There is an anoa from the Celebes, born in the Garden, and a half-grown giraffe, for which the sum of 16,000 marks had to be paid when it was about two years old. It is a specimen of the Southern form; ‘South’ Africa gives one a wrong impression as to its habitat. There are no giraffes now alive in ‘South’ Africa. The Kalihari Desert is the most southern limit of the giraffe in Africa to-day.
We now reach the deer sheds, containing wapiti, roe (many albinos), red, fallow, rein, axis, sika from Japan, and deer from the Moluccas. There are the inevitable herd of American bison, a fine collection of llamas and alpacas, some camels, yaks, buffaloes, zebus, asses, and Burchell’s zebras, an ant-eater near some very old elms, some giant tortoises from the Galapagos, and the ever-present Shetland ponies.
The magnificent concert-house, which has been added to of late and redecorated, contains the largest rooms in the city of Frankfort. Here are given two concerts daily by the Garden’s own band of thirty-five performers. In the summer two bands play. Ten special symphony concerts are given each year.
In September, 1901, three giraffes, forty ostriches, seven lions, five jaguars, black and ordinary leopards were exhibited, but the above have now nearly all been sold.