Lippincott's Magazine, page 139 by Various Authors
<< Return to Title Details & Download140
idea in 1859, the enlarged size of the Park, the growth of the city and the prospect of the Centennial, have widened the views of the society, and it is confidently anticipated that a Garden will be established, with a collection and all the necessary appurtenances, that will equal in a few years the superb one of London. The strangers that will flock here in 1876 will one and all visit the Zoological Gardens if in any sort of condition for display at that time. In 1851, the year of the great Exhibition of London, the number of visitors to the Zoological Gardens increased from 360,402 in the year before to 667,243; and in 1862, the time of the second and International Exhibition, it leaped from 381,337 in 1861 to 682,205. The number of visitors to the London Garden has been steadily on the increase since its foundation. In 1863 the largest number up to that time, except the Exhibition years, was 468,700, and by regular progression annually it reached in 1871 the large amount of 595,917 persons.
The situation of our proposed Gardens is most admirable in every way. Stretching along the west bank of the Schuylkill for nearly a third of a mile; opposite the principal entrance to the Park on one side, and the West Philadelphia approach by Thirty-fifth street on the other; directly on the route to the Centennial Exhibition; contiguous to the great railroad artery of the United States, the Pennsylvania Central, a sideling from which will enter the receiving-house of the society (marked D on the plan), and thus enable animals and curiosities from all parts of the United States to be carried without change of cars directly to the Gardens, or from the East Indies, China, Japan, South America and the Pacific islands with but one trans-shipment, while the canal alongside enables freights of all kinds and from any part of the world to be deposited at the very entrance-gates; the ground rolling and fertile, rising in the centre, and sufficiently elevated to be away from the floods of the river; larger by some acres tha