Science: Horde

Last week, two giraffes gazed mournfully down upon Boston. It was not enough that an ocean and most of a continent lay between them and their clover-clad African home; not enough that they had been rolled and tossed in a creaking steel ark over thousands of watery miles. But now they were suspicious characters. They had been sequestered until Government veterinarians could be sure they did not harbor anthrax bacteria. Nearby were 15 African antelopes and four African wart hogs, similarly sequestered, suspect, sad.

Meantime, the steel ark’s Noah, Dr. William M. Mann, proceeded from Boston to the National Zoological Park at Washington, which he superintends, with some 1,700 other African creatures loaded on eight trucks, and ushered all safely into permanent captivity. It was the end of the largest live-animal-collecting expedition of modern times, which all started when Manufacturer Walter P. Chrysler (automobiles) heard that Washington urchins lamented the lack of giraffes, zebras and “rhinoc’ruses” in the nation’s zoo (TiME, March 8).

No “rhinoc’rus” was among the horde of beasts, birds and reptiles captured by Dr. Mann, but there were: a shoebill stork* and some 400 other birds including hawks, crested tawny eagles, white-headed vultures, paradise finches, rare parrots; an elephant shrew; the largest leopard in captivity; civet cats, water mongooses, baboons, purple-faced monkeys, hyenas. Among the antelopes quarantined at Boston were five impalla, most graceful of their family; a baby eland, blind in one eye from the blazing grass in which he was captured; several dik-diks, no bigger than jackrabbits.

*The sixth captured by collectors in the past 35 years. The first shoebill stork ever brought to the U. S. arrived last month from upper Egypt (TiME, Oct. 18) in charge of his captor, Collector George H. Bistany, and was to tour the country’s zoos.