Visiting the Animals.
Unfortunately, in spite of the amount of land on this continent, it is difficult for any but the very wealthy to have access to much of it, hence many readers will say, “We have no yard in which to keep pets,” or, “Our yard is too small.” Of course, if you are living in a flat you must go without a zoo, but if you have a yard it will probably not be less than twenty-five feet wide, and Fig. 22 shows how a very comprehensive zoo can be placed in the rear of a twenty-five foot lot, without materially interfering with such domestic matters as the drying of clothes on wash-day. A city
Fig. 22.—Arrangement of Dens in the Back-yard.
Lot Twenty-five Feet Wide
is usually one hundred feet deep; this will allow plenty of room for the house and the clothes-lines, and still leave the end of the lot for a famous back-yard zoölogical garden.
When the writer was building back-yard zoos on the banks of the muddy Licking River, in old Kentucky, wire-cloth and wire-netting were unknown, and a few old barrels and dry-goods boxes, a saw, hatchet, and some nails, constituted the materials and tools with which he and his playmates made cages for pets, frog-ponds, and dove-cots.
The writer’s