A Handbook on the Management of Animals in Captivity in Lower Bengal

Abstract

CONSIDERING the number of zoological gardens in Europe, and their long establishment, it is singular that it should have been left to the superintendent of a zoological garden at Calcutta, and to a native of India withal, to produce the first practical handbook on the management of animals in captivity. The author, who, we believe, is a member of the “Brahma Somaj,” and one of the very few natives of British India that have exhibited any taste for natural history, has been for some years superintendent of the Zoological Garden at Calcutta, an excellent institution mainly kept up by the Government of Bengal, but under the control of a committee of the subscribers. This committee, at the suggestion of Sir Steuart Bayley, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, came to the conclusion that, after thirteen years' experience of the management of animals, it might be possible to produce a handbook on the subject which “would be of interest to the scientific world,” and at the same time “of great use to nobles and other persons who, on a smaller scale, keep a collection of animals in captivity.”