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Good-natured as Captain Rowe is, I think he would draw the line at a large consignment of durian aboard - he complains already that the animal cages smell a bit strong. Three of the Siamese gibbons have colds and no appetite at all. We tempt them with boiled sweet potatoes, onions, oranges, apples, rice, bread and honey, milk and oatmeal, greens, and bananas. One old lady, known as Grandma, eats like a pig, but most of the others are choosy, and Stengah, Mr. Black, and Skinny, won't eat anything. I can't see what they live on.

The most serious loss to date is that our of male serow. That really is a blow. These goat antelopes have never been seen alive in the States, and we had a fine pair from Fort de Kock that we were hoping to get safely back to the Zoo.

The young orang from Borneo is sneezing.

A tiny finch escaped from its cage this morning while Davis was cleaning, and flew into the big orang's cage. The great villain bent over, sniffed at the tiny bird, but didn't touch it, whereupon it flew out, was captured by Davis, and put safely back into its cage, probably never realizing what a narrow escape it had.

Harry is still unreconciled to his cage, and is getting himself a bad set of menagerie marks. It is a problem what to do with him, for he is frightened when he is out on deck, and is rubbing great sores on his nose when he is in the cage.

[[underlined]] August 18 - 20 Bombay [[/underlined]]

I wonder if anyone ever came to Bombay for [[strikethrough]] four [[/strikethrough]] ^[[three]] days and saw as little of it as we did. We hurried from the Consulate to the Zoo to the bank to the ship and back again. Every moment we spent ashore we were worrying about our charges on board, and yet there was a lot of business to attend to in town.

Our first call was of course on the Consul, where we picked up some mail. Then out to the Zoo, where we met the Superintendent of Parks, Mr. Ahmedi, the head of the Zoo, and the chief veterinary officer. Our two gaur, sent here by the Mysore Zoological Gardens some six weeks ago, are fine young animals, tame, cow-eyed, and sleek. Not very imposing yet - they just look like unusually fine calves - but if they live they will be handsome bison.

The Zoo is in Victoria Gardens, and is more a botanical garden than a zoological one. They have some fine specimens, however, including a group of sloth bears, a riding camel, huge Bengal tigers (one of them tame), a group of langur monkeys, a mother leopard and two cubs.

We arranged to take the cubs, and Ahmedi secured a full-grown male for us in addition - a tall, light colored Persian leopard. He also gave us the langurs, but we were unable to get a permit to take them out. There is a government law that monkeys may not be shipped during the Southwest Monsoon.