The designs are beautifully executed. One side represents the beasts, viz.: the elephant, rhinoceros, giraffe, Hindoo bull, llama, etc. The other side represents the birds, as follows: the eagle, ostrich, crane, adjutant, pelican, condor, swan, parrot, stork, ibis, and bird of paradise. (See engravings in front of book.)
The inscription on the medal is as follows:
“To Matthew Scott, for his success in breeding
Foreign Animals, in the Zoölogical Society’s Gardens,
London, 1866.”
I think that the above speaks for itself, and needs no further comment.
The contents of the resolutions were, if possible, more flattering, and modesty prevents my giving them verbatim.
I felt, after I was the recipient of both of these testimonials to my humble abilities, that I was rewarded fully for my trials, dangers, and toils, as the care-taker and breeder of the beast and bird. I had but one regret, and that was that my good old mother was not living at the time, to share my pleasure.
I continued in the Gardens, superintending the general management, as to keeping and breeding, until the special task was allotted to me of going to France, to bring over the animal that was destined to become the “animal of animals,” viz.: his majesty “Jumbo.”
My experiences with him, so varied and peculiar, would fill volumes; but I have endeavored to give some of the salient points of his character, and stories of his wanderings in the “Biography of Jumbo,” which follows this.