The menageries : quadrupeds, described and drawn from living subjects.

Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The menageries : quadrupeds, described and drawn from living subjects. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    32/412 (page 22)
    buted very much to remove some of the popular pre- judices concerning’ the quadruped, and to induce cor- rect ideas of its peculiar movements. We cannot, indeed, upon a stage, see the animal bound about as in a state of nature—roll with delight in the mud, as Bruce has described it doing, to produce a crust upon its body which should be impervious to its tormentors the flies—collect water in its trunk, to spirt over its parched skin—and browse upon the tall branches of trees which it reaches with its proboscis. We shall not see these peculiarities of its native condition, till we have a proper receptacle for the elephant in our national menagerie, the Zoological Gardens. With- out imputing blame to those who exhibit the elephant in this country, there is certainly great cruelty in shut- ting up in a miserable cage a creature who has such delight in liberty, and who is so obedient without be- Headof a Female Elephant in Atkins's Menagerie.