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20

Recommendations.

At present the most serious drawback under which the Department labors is the lack of space in the Menagerie building for the proper comfort of the visitors who daily visit the collection. For weeks in succession the daily throng has been so great as to make it a matter of difficulty to pass through the building, or even to perform necessary work in connection with the care of the animals. Its has several times been established that between 2000 and 3000 visitors have viewed the collection in that small and rudely constructed building in a single day.

At first the ragamuffin element threatened to completely crowd out all other visitors, and it became necessary to station a watchman in the building to compel the small-boy element to depart after a reasonable time. The character of the visitors in daily attendance is in the highest degree complimentary to the experiment of opening this collection to the public, and causes a constant regret that it impracticable, if not also impossible, to provide