In 1861 the deer sheds in the North Garden were rebuilt, and the larger antelopes were removed to the new house in the South Garden. Two eland fawns were born, making a total of twenty since the bequest in 1851. On December 14 the Prince Consort, President of the Society, died at Windsor.
In 1862 Sir George Clark was elected President of the Society. A pheasantry and kangaroo sheds were built.
In 1863 cattle-sheds and a new monkey house were constructed.
In June, 1865, the first African elephant ever seen alive in England was received (in exchange for an Indian rhinoceros) from the Jardin des Plantes, Paris. This was the famous Jumbo, and in September a female of the same species (Alice) was purchased.
In 1866 a fire broke out in the giraffe house, which suffocated a female giraffe and her fawn. In the winter of 1866 a heavy snowstorm destroyed the covering of the pheasantry. The birds (many of which were worth £50 each) escaped into the park, but were mostly recovered.
In 1867 a young male walrus, brought to Dundee from Davis Straits by a steam whaler, was purchased, but did not live long.
HIPPOPOTAMI, LONDON.
The list of donors in 1868 was long, and was headed by the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh. An African two-horned rhinoceros, captured in Upper Nubia, was purchased from Herr Carl Hagenbeck, of Hamburg. This was believed to be the first specimen of an African rhinoceros received alive in Europe since the days of the Romans. Lecomte returned from the Falkland Islands with a few animals and birds, upwards of eighty specimens having died on the voyage.
In 1869 the new elephant house was completed, and contained two African elephants, two Indian elephants, two Indian rhinoceroses, one African rhinoceros, one American tapir, the first and most complete series of the larger order of pachyderms ever brought together in Europe.