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15

[[double-underline]]Recommendations.[[/double-underline]]

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 [[strikethrough]]the[[/strikethrough]] necessary work in connection with the care of the animals. It has several times been estimated that between 2000 and 3000 visitors have viewed the collection in that small and rudely -constructed building in a single day.

[[^paragraph symbol]] At first the ragamuffin element threatened to completely crowd out ^[[all other]] visitors [[strikethrough]]of the more intelligent and refined class[[/strikethrough]], 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 is impracticable^[[,]] if not also impossible, ^[[to provide ample room for the comfort of visitors and also]] to have all the appointments of th^[[e]] collection of the highest order of excellence even now.

Transcription Notes:
On the second line of the report, "Menagerie" has a typographic editor's mark -- "M" is underlined and "l.c." is written in the margin. A curator should decide whether to ignore (current state), transcribe, or fix the manuscript as directed.