That we might form fair judgments on various questions upon which our opinions have, from time to time, been asked, we have had to forecast, as well as we could, the development of this undertaking after its management shall have passed from the hands of those now in direction. We trust that we shall not be thought going beyond our province if we here record some of the [280]reflections to which we have thus been led, bearing on the question of the general plan for laying out the property.

With whatever anticipations the scheme of the Zoological Park may have been framed, and whatever may now be intended to be made of it, there will soon be a tendency with the public to look upon it as the principal representative, in this country, of that class of popular institutions found in foreign capitals, which are best known as Zoological Gardens. It will be expected and, through the gradual action of public opinion, will eventually be required, to stand in favorable comparison with the best of these in respect to the one common distinctive object of all this class of Institutions—that of supplying illustrations of various forms of animal life. It will be judged by comparison with them in this respect, but not without consideration of certain special circumstances, some of which may be indicated as follows;

First: the more notable of existing Zoological Gardens have had their origin in private enterprise, and have been established largely, if not wholly, by funds contributed from private purses. They are supported mainly by the admission fees of visitors, and are necessarily managed with close regard to the income that can be reckoned upon, from year to year, from this source. The government aid which some receive is mainly given in the form of leases upon nominal rent, of the government land which they occupy.

The Washington institution is to differ from all of this character, not because of any defined difference in its objects, but because the outlay required for its plant and the outlay required for its maintenance; its repairs and running expenses, is to be supplied by the Nation, and visitors are not to be required to make any special contribution toward them.

Second, the land which the Washington institution is to occupy lies chiefly upon the slopes of a valley between two bodies of elevated ground, upon which the building out of the city is rapidly advancing, and the institution is thus likely in time to be in the midst of the most notable residence quarter of the city. It will also be in the line of most convenient communication between the present most fashionable quarter of the city and its largest and finest public park and promenade. So situated, and having been ordained and being maintained by Congress, it will take rank with the more dignified and monumental capital affairs of the Nation. It will have a more conspicuous standing in this respect than any foreign institution of its class.

Third, the ground assigned to the Washington institution is much larger than that allowed the European institutions with which it will be compared. It is five times as large, for example, as that of the Royal Zoological Society in London, the Secretary of which, more than thirty years ago, stated that if that institution could afford to acquire a much larger and more diversified body of land, it would be an enormous advantage, both for preserving its animals in health and for exhibiting them satisfactorily. A similar statement would be true of every zoological collection in Europe.

Fourth: the land assigned by Congress for the Washington institution [281]is not only of unusual extent, but of rarely diversified topography, offering situations for all desirable buildings, pastures and other enclosures, in which conditions are presented in respect to aspect, exposure, elevation, dryness and moisture, much more varied than are possessed by any European institution.

Having due regard to these several points of difference, it is to be considered certain that if this institution at Washington does not, from the zoological point of view, appear to be decidedly in advance of any existing zoological institution, there will be much constant complaint against it of fairly well-informed and intelligent public opinion; complaint often unjust as to those who will have to meet it; often wrong in particulars, yet representing, on the whole, dissatisfaction which Congress will not regard as wholly unreasonable. The result will be that a process will gradually come into operation of revising, enlarging or reconstructing one feature of the original plan after another; and this process will go on until the institution acquires in a great degree the character of a patch-work of after-thoughts, haplessly connected by a pre-established system of roads, walks and bridges.

To fully realize the danger of such a result, and also the difficulty of securing economy and efficiency of administration which will be established with it, it must be considered that, as far as can now be seen, the advancement of the undertaking is always to be dependent from year to year on votes by Congress of an itemized appropriation. An itemized appropriation will be, in effect, a series of appropriations, each limited in its application to some particular item of the general undertaking. For example, a certain portion of the total sum of an annual itemized appropriation will be required to be used for the carrying on, as far as it will go, during the succeeding year, of the draining of a particular area, and nothing else; another certain portion of it for advancing work, either of construction, repair, renewal or revision of a particular house, bridge or section of fence, road or walk, and for nothing else, and so on.

Every man of experience in the management of public works knows that where this method is pursued it is practically impossible to prevent the ambition, anxiety, thought, energy and discretion of those directly engaged in the carrying on of them from being at all times inordinately bent to the purpose of bringing about, before the time comes for obtaining the succeeding years’ appropriations, of specific results of a sort that will at once make a favorable impression upon those casually observing them and regarding them with reference to standards to which the minds of such observers readily recur. Nor can it be questioned that, with a view to securing such appropriations as are necessary to the advancement of public works so managed, it sooner or later in their history comes to be thought the path of wisdom for those in direction of them to pursue a policy which, if regard were had to that which will be ultimately and permanently desirable, would be recognized as unwise, because wasteful, inefficient and time-serving. The more general public interest there is in such works, and the more they are adapted to gratify popular curiosity and the popular craving for amusement, the stronger is this tendency. But, in [282]proportion as it is recognized that the ends aimed at in these works are ends the chief value of which will be obtained, not by the present as much as by a future public, and as it is recognized that such value as they will have to the present public will be to that public as a whole, and not that portion of it which may chance from year to year to be observant of them, the less active is this tendency. It is hardly to be observed, for example, in such government undertakings as those of harbor breakwaters and fortifications. It is almost controlling in the yearly outlays upon local pleasure grounds.

The only hope of successful contention with such dangers as have thus been brought into view, lies in the possibility of establishing and maintaining in the public mind, in the mind of Congress, and in the mind of all concerned, a common sense of the folly of judging of what has been done, or of what is desirable to be done, in the management of the institution, by the direct satisfaction that may at once be taken in the immediate results of special operations, and of the wisdom of judging of it by regard for what is being gained on the whole line of operations toward results only to be reached by long, steady and methodical pursuit of a well-considered, pre-established plan.

There is, then, to be nothing in the whole future history of the undertaking as important as the invention of a plan for it.

A plan is the contrivance and setting down of a process of means and methods by which, under given conditions, a desired object may be reached. Before the first step in the logical studying out of such a process can be taken, a clear conception of the desired object must be in the mind of the planner.

We have stated that the object in this case is understood to be the same with that {of} Zoological Gardens in general, modified by certain special circumstances of the locality and of conditions established for its management. There is, however, one complication to be considered. The proposed institution is not desired to be a Zoological Garden, but a Zoological Park.

Here for the present stands a difficulty which may be thus explained. An important difference between a parklike place and a gardenlike place, having regard to the manner in which the words park and garden have been more commonly used in English literature, is this: A gardenlike place is a place distinguished by a display of objects collected in it, and by the effectiveness of the manner in which these objects are disposed with reference to the display of their distinctive qualities. A parklike place is distinguished less by the obvious qualities of the objects to be seen in it than by the manner in which they so combine, merge and blend in groups and masses as to become contributive to effects of scenery acting upon the mind disposingly to such conditions as are describable by terms used alike in application to conditions of scenery, and to conditions of human emotions, or of human character, such as stern, rugged, mild, genial, wild, cultivated, and so on.

Such work as is to be done for the advancement of the enterprise in the next ten or twenty years is, therefore, to be fairly judged during that time, not by the results of it that may then be seen but by the promise which those [283]results make of much later results. All that is to be done under the direction of those who are now to act on the subject is chiefly important as it secures advantages and avoids entailing disadvantages for those who are to manage the institution later.

In addition to the consideration already noted of the probability that this institution will be expected to provide what is provided by the Zoological Gardens of Europe, but in such better way as the land assigned to it gives opportunity, it is to be observed that since the act was passed providing for the National Zoological Park, Congress has passed another act providing for the taking of a much larger body of land in the same valley, but further out of town, and which will be less complicated with urban conditions of neighborhood, for the purpose of a park—a park without qualification.

The controlling purpose of this larger Park may be supposed to be the conservation and development in the highest degree practicable of conditions of charming natural scenery. In the Zoological Park this object should be held subordinate to the purpose of a collection of living animals under conditions as favorable as practicable to their health and to the display of their natural characteristics. This being the apparent intent of Congress, inasmuch as results will logically grow from it in the plan of the Zoological Park, which, judging from experience, are sure to excite remonstrance, we think it proper, after due consideration of the premises, to state that in our professional opinion as landscape designers with reference simply to landscape considerations for the distant future, it is wiser to adopt such a course than to attempt to

As to a definition of organic purpose it is first of all necessary that in considering it conditions that are temporary and changeable shall be disregarded.

It must be kept in mind that the site of the park will not in the future be out of town, as it is now. It will be practically in the midst of a dense population. Going out of town will mean going beyond the Zoological Park.

Next it is necessary that it should be had clearly in mind that the scenery of the site, no matter what is done out of respect for it, is to be greatly changed. If no change should be intentionally made with a view to the purpose of the institution, nature will make radical changes. In from twenty to thirty years half the present trees will be in a feeble, delapidated and essentially in a dying condition; much more than half will be cumberers of the ground. To secure a healthy development of sylvan scenery during the next thirty years, at least two thirds of all the trees upon which the present agreeable aspect of the place depends, must be removed.