Penny Magazine

No. 001 - THE PENNY MAGAZINE - Mar. 31, 1832

THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS.

THE greater number of our readers must have heard of the Zoological Gardens, in the Regent's Park, at London, which have been established about four years, and which now comprise the finest menagerie in the world, if we regard the number and variety of the animals. The expense of this establishment, which amounts to many thousand pounds a year, is maintained by the annual subscriptions of the Fellows of the Zoological Society, and the payment (a shilling) by each person who is recommended by the ticket of a proprietor. It is not our intention to give a description of all the various animals there; but we shall from time to time notice any remarkable circumstance that occurs, as illustrative of their habits; or we shall mention any new curiosity which is purchased by the Society, or presented to it.

The Wapiti, in the Zoological Gardens, shed his immense horns on the sixth of February last. Their weight was twenty-one pounds five ounces. In 1831 he shed them on the 1st of February, when their weight was twenty-three pounds two ounces. In captivity, therefore, the Wapiti shows no deviation from the law of nature, which he exhibits in his own American forests,—that he should shed his horns, or bony excrescences, every year. All the deer tribe are subject to this law. Already the new horns of the Wapiti are beginning rapidly to grow—at first looking like a soft velvety substance, and gradually getting harder and more branching, till they become the gigantic antlers, which within a year will dropp off, again to be renewed. It is generally considered that the horns of the deer tribe increase in size as the animal advances in age; but in the individual instance of the Wapiti of the Zoological Gardens, the horns of 1832 weigh less, by one pound thirteen ounces, than those of 1831.

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A very large bear, of the species called the Grizzly, has been recently brought to the Zoological Gardens. This is the largest and most ferocious of the bear tribe—the most terrible quadruped of North America, whom even the Indians, accustomed as they are to every danger, fly from and fear. He is exceedingly tenacious of life, and thus if he encounters a single Indian, there is little chance of destroying him with the generally fatal rifle. Lewis and Clark, two enterprising travellers in the wildest regions of North America, describe an encounter with a bear of this species. Six hunters went to attack him: four fired, and each wounded him. The two who had reserved their fire, hit him when he sprang forward. Before they could again load, the fearful animal was upon them. They fled to a river: four were able again to fire, concealed behind a tree, and again hit him. He turned upon them, and they were obliged to throw themselves into the water, from a bank twenty feet high. He took also to the water in chase of his hunters; and had not one of the two men who remained on shore shot him through the head, the hindmost swimmer would at least have rued the perilous adventure.

The Brown Bear of the northern parts of Europe is not so ferocious as the Grizzly Bear, but of prodigious strength. Mr. Lloyd, in his Northern Field Sports, says, " he walks with facility on his hind legs, and in that position can bear the heaviest burthens." Indeed Mr. Neilson (a Swede) says, " a bear has been seen walking on his hinder feet along a small tree that stretched across a river, bearing a dead horse in his fore-paws."

Woodcut engraving

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