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HENSON: What did Dr. Mann see as the major problems for the zoo when he took it over, when you were first there? What plans did he have for it? Did he talk about that much?

MANN: Well he always had plans for it, but what he principly had to do was figure out how he could run it on the amount of money he had. The first gorilla that we had, a little animal called N'Gi was collected by a man called J. L. Buck, no relation to Frank Buck. It came from, I think, the Camaroons. He brought the gorilla to our zoo, wanted to sell it to Bill, and of course, Bill was dying to have it. The zoo had never had a gorilla. I forget what Buck wanted for it, I think it was five thousand dollars. That would have depleted our entire budget for animals for the year, that was the way he had to figure. There was money left from the Chrysler expedition, and that was in a special fund for the purchase of animals. When the expedition came back Bill put in an account and said there was this money left, I forget what it was, something like ten or fifteen thousand dollars. Chrysler said, "Keep it for purchase of animals." So that's how we bought the first gorilla.

HENSON: I wanted to ask you, it said in that book that he was on his way down to Cuba. Would that have been going to Madame [Dona Rosalia] Abreu? Do you know? He was supposedly bringing it down to Havanna and stopped there. Would Buck have been bringing the gorilla down to sell to her?