I write at once to say that I am very glad to receive your note of 22d which has but just reached me and that I am in cordial accord with all it suggests. The three localities are still open to your Society and the only change in the plans or forethoughts of the Department is in the direction of improved facilities for the purposes that you have in view.

We have the topogl map of the Long Crouch district on a larger scale

[624] [626]than the lithograph and of this a tracing can be made for you. It is a poor map, however; by no means sufficiently accurate to plan upon, even approximately without some study of the ground. There is less surface available for buildings or courts, especially turfy courts, than you are likely to suppose; especially as it is very desirable to avoid occupation of the ground within about a hundred feet of the park face of the wood. Large craggy ledges are the characteristic feature but there is I think good opportunity for (deep rock enclosed) courts for burrowing animals and in which wood-chucks, marmots, badgers prairie dogs and gophers might be exhibited almost in a state of nature. But, of course, the collection must be limited, cruelly, I fear to a naturalist, more so than Mr Ross, at least, has contemplated. What I have hoped is that but little being attempted that little can be a great deal better done than anything within the same limits has been anywhere else. It is my opinion that the result would be more popularly attractive than such a collection as that of New York which would cost fifty times as much to support; even more attractive than such an one as that of Philala. Even a child would enjoy more peeping into an old rabbit warren, as described by Jefferies in Wild Life in a Southern Country, than in staring into a cage of sulky lions.

Yours Truly,