Animal exhibition

“ No one can, one would suppose, pass through the galleries in Cromwell Road and remain quite insensible to the beauties of animal life. Beauty of form and beauty of colour are conspicuously combined in many species of birds and insects. And much of this colour-beauty and splendid iridescence is known to be due to minute scales, to thin films of air or fluid, and to microscopically fine lines developed upon scales or feathers. But there is one phase of beauty which cannot be exhibited in the museum—the beauty that comes of life as opposed to death. ”

“ During her performance, the pastoral scene in the centre discovers a variety of mechanical figures admirably grouped, all of which seem endued, as it were, with animal life, to the admiration of the spectator. The last curiosity is a canary bird in a cage, which whistles two or three airs in the most natural manner imaginable. Upon the whole, the united collection strikes us as the most wonderful exertion of art which ever trod before so close on the heels of nature. ”

“ Many animals of great zoological interest, from their nocturnal habits, or natural disposition, display themselves so seldom that their possession is valueless from the point of view of the public, whilst closely allied species are not distinguished except by trained observers. If the object of a collection is simply to provide a hardy and popular exhibition, it is neither difficult nor very costly to get together and to maintain. ”

“ The exhibitions next in popularity to these itinerant theatres are the travelling menageries, or, to speak more intelligibly, the "Wild beast shows," where a military band in beef-eater's costume, with leopardskin caps, play incessantly, and where large highly coloured representations of tigers tearing men's heads open, and a lion being burnt with red hot irons to induce him to drop his victim, are hung up outside, by way of attracting visitors. ”

“ The exhibition was held in two tents, one for the wild animals and the other for the ring performance. The wild animals were in exactly eight wagon cages and consisted of a sickly-looking lion, a half-starved tiger, several raccoons, two foxes, a small bear, and about a dozen monkeys. ”

“ Even if a man had had all the animals he wanted from Africa, he could not have made an exhibit of them that would have been either scientific, natural, artistic, or satisfying, for twenty-five years ago the art of taxidermy and of museum exposition of animal life hardly existed. ”

“ They know right well where their safety lies, and on that near and bushy bank, laying aside all alarm, they group and pose in artless grace that tempts one to a lavish use of films and gives the chance for that crowning triumph of the art, a wild animal group, none of which is looking at the camera. ”

“ Happily by these means we now find such works of art exhibited in ever increasing numbers, not only in museums abroad, but also in the public collections of our own country. But as yet this new department of artistic activity is not generally as well understood as it should be. It is still far too little valued.
What labour has to be devoted to the artistically correct setting up of even one single large mammal in a museum—for instance, a giraffe! First the animal must be hunted down in the wilderness, and its hide carefully prepared. ”

“ The amphitheater was as full of people as if it had been the only exhibition given that afternoon in Chicago. A baby elephant lumbered in, followed by a large hound and two ponies, and these animals went through a clever performance of marching, wheeling, waltzing, and posing under the direction of a graceful young girl dressed in a close-fitting purple velvet jacket, trousers, and military boots. They were excellently managed, and performed cleverly.
A wild boar came next,—an ugly-faced fellow,—and was put through his feats of hurdle-racing and riding a chariot drawn by another boar. ”

“ Nobody in any of our museums has as yet been able to restore the natural features to stuffed animals; and he who has any doubts of this, let him take a living cat or dog and compare them with a stuffed cat or dog in any of the first-rate museums. ”

“ Some splendid specimens that command the best prizes in the show room and which are ideals of their breed are very poor when it comes to reproducing their own species. Sometimes a second-rate animal in the show room is the best sire or dam in the whole field. ”

“ According to the 'Globe,' a subterranean laboratory has been opened at the Museum of Natural History, which is situated in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris. It has been created in order to study the influence of darkness on animals, and discover by experiment how animal species are thus modified. ”

“ In the summer of 1911, the daily open-air exhibition of nine apes dining at 4 o’clock on an elevated platform in the large outside cage at the Primate House, will long be remembered by the crowds of visitors who saw it. Such exhibitions are entirely germane to the educational purposes of a zoological garden or park, for they illustrate the mentality of animals and their wonderful likeness to man, far more forcibly than the best printed statements. ”

“ The delicacy of their structure, the splendour of the colours in which they are habited, their poetical diet, and the impossibility of keeping them alive in a confined state, are the attributes of delicacy and beauty which have made them objects of interest to all persons who have any insight to the mysterious graces of animal organisation. So brilliant is the plumage of some of the varieties, that they have been named after gems: thus, in the case before which the visitor has arrived, he will find the garnet-throated humming bird, and the topaz humming bird. ”

“ Fuertes has produced a natural history gallery of paintings of the Larger and Smaller Mammals of North America which is a notable contribution to wild-animal portraiture, and the reproductions of these works of art are among the most effective and lifelike examples of color printing ever produced in this country. ”

“ I have further tried to show by illustrations of another giraffe, and of a series of antelopes, down to the tiny dwarf 172 antelope, how under the hand of the artist the animal world can be made to rise up again, as if waked anew to life.
All our larger museums ought to exhibit the most important and most prominent representatives of the animal kingdom modelled in attractive groups in their natural surroundings.
In America it has become the custom for private individuals to place at the disposal of the zoological institutions extensive collections and large sums of money. ”

“ In addition he would have enabled others to share his enjoyment with him. There is a great field here for the painter; and many would welcome a change from the same old cows and sheep tamely grazing in a meadow, which is all that artists usually present to us of animal life.
Among the most conspicuous animals met with are the elephant, the bison, the buffalo, and the rhinoceros. And it would be hard to discover beauty in any of these. ”

“ As I have already pointed out, there is probably no museum in the world in which so small a proportion of the objects worthy of exhibition is visible to the public, or in which the objects are crowded together so closely. It is now more true than ever that if another museum building as large as the present one were provided, it could be at once filled with specimens already on hand." We feel no doubt that our American cousins will be equal to the occasion. ”

“ In the same sense we may understand the application of the term to modern animal painting, distinguished as it has been by peculiar attention to the colours, lustre, and texture of skin; nor is it in art alone that the definition will hold. In animals themselves, when their sublimity depends upon their muscular forms or motions, or necessary and principal attributes, as perhaps more than all others in the horse, we do not call them picturesque, but consider them as peculiarly fit to be associated with pure historical subject. ”

“ Turning from the human to the zoological branch of the exhibition, we find the usual assortment of animals from the monkey up to Jumbo, the elephant, who is only one of a dozen in the possession of his owner. ”

“ As the howling of the wolves in their distant cages is heard by the lions, excitement breaks beyond control, and the roars of the hungry beasts only cease as the truck of food is emptied. As a spectacle, the sight has a certain interest. But 67except for those whose imagination can picture no other side of animal life in daily contact with man, it is, perhaps, the worst moment to select in order to appreciate the real character of those most friendly beasts, the lions and tigers at the Zoo. ”

“ They are executed in the very first style of excellence, and may justly be considered as chefs d’œuvres in the Art. Every species of the Horse and Dog is comprised in the Collection; and the Proprietors do not hesitate to challenge a similar Exhibition in the whole Sporting World. ”

“ Those wise and watchful hounds, those lions and wolves and spotted leopards make no room for her. We see the hare couching upon her form, and the lobster lying on its rocky bed; but for the most beautiful of domestic animals we search, and search in vain. Only in the Capitoline Museum may be found a spirited bas-relief, of a late period, which represents a woman trying to teach her cat to dance to the music of a lyre. ”

“ For those who would like to see the nests, some museums have them on exhibition, such as in the Chicago Natural History Museum, where two nests are placed in their natural setting, and beside them is a quantity of the material of commerce in its raw state. ”

“ To 1650 belongs the picture of Orpheus, charming the animal world by the strains of his lyre, in the Amsterdam Museum. Here we see that the master had also studied wild animals. He is most successful in the bear. In the same gallery is another chef-d'œuvre of the same year—a hilly landscape with a shepherdess singing to her child, a shepherd playing on the bagpipe, and oxen, sheep, and goats around. ”

“ Moreover, the gun appears to be gradually being abandoned in favour of field-glass and camera, the observation of animals in their own haunts being now more popular than ever; whilst the recent publication of various excellent works illustrated with photographs of living creatures under natural conditions will tend greatly to increase the number of those who take greater pleasure in watching the habits of living mammal and bird, reptile and fish, than in examining mere museum specimens of the same animals. ”

“ Thus the gradations of life may be clearly apprehended by the visitor. The highest development of animal life he has seen in the MAMMALIA SALOON, all the animals of which produce their young alive and suckle them; the order of life immediately below the mammalia, he has examined in the marvellous varieties of birds arranged in the NORTHERN GALLERY; then he turned to the west, and examined the third order of animal life in the REPTILES ”

“ A third museum is found to be full of stuffed birds, eggs, and nests; some of the birds stuffed in their natural surroundings are very beautifully done. The zoological library adjoins. A fourth museum, built in 1894, contains a large collection of stuffed animals and a collection of shells. Here is a huge skeleton of an African elephant, with good tusks, and a stuffed giraffe; a whole unmounted hippopotamus skin, and a stuffed quagga, now extinct.
Close by this museum are some pens containing zebras and wild asses. The new bear house, built in 1897, contains a fine collection. ”

“ We unhesitatingly say that this official obscurantism is no longer possible, and that it is owing to chiefs like Sir William Flower that it is dying now and will be incapable of resuscitation in the future. A zoological museum is capable of a vast aesthetic leavening of the masses; a love of nature is universal and precedes art. ”

“ The pictures of these different animals, performing their several exploits, caused a great deal of wonder and admiration among the village boys and girls. In cities, where such exhibitions occur very frequently, such things would not be much thought of. But it is very different in the country, where public exhibitions of every sort are "like angels' visits, few and far between." For nearly a week before the day appointed for this juggling exhibition, there was nothing talked of in this quiet village so much as the "show." ”

“ In this gallery we see all the animals of the Zoo, stuffed and peaceful. The tiger no longer prowls round and round his cage when the dinner-hour draws near, he will never be hungry again; the lion no longer is angry when the crowd stare, he cannot see them; the patient elephant has given up for ever carrying children on his back, and the hippo has ceased to wallow in the waters of his beloved bath. Even the silver-white polar bear does not mind the heat, and pines no longer for his ice and snow. ”

“ In the menagerie, and the hippodrome also, experts are constantly engaged in training elephants, camels, performing horses, and other animals, and are thus preparing new and attractive features, some of which will be as novel to the show profession as they will be new and attractive to the public.
I might fill hundreds of pages with the notices of the New York papers during the protracted exhibition at the Empire Rink. ”