By the Lake

(See Cover)

If the weather this Fourth of July weekend is warm, and sunny, the U.S. people will go to their zoos by the hundreds of thousands. From New York's 251-acre Bronx Zoo to San Diego's magnificently landscaped Balboa Park, they will wander along the tree-shaded walks, peering into cages, gawking over moats, throwing peanuts to the elephants and popcorn to the bears, lolling, sweating, drinking, eating—enjoying, in sum, what is one of the most universal of summer pastimes.

One of the biggest crowds of all will go to Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo, a 79-year-old institution rich in legends of escaped animals (two of its sea lions once flopped into a North Clark Street saloon), and one of the chief ornaments of Chicago's tiara-like lake front. The Lincoln Park Zoo is not the nation's biggest, or even its best. But it has one great advantage: it is small, compact, set off by lagoons and gently rolling lawns, and is easily accessible by foot, bus, trolley and El. Largely because of its location, it consistently outdraws Chicago's bigger, more modern Brookfield Zoo, which lies 13 miles southwest of the Loop. Even when the Cubs are as determinedly in the pennant race as they are this season, Lincoln Park has bigger crowds than Wrigley Field; its 1947 attendance will probably hit 3,000,000—a new high.

At the head of this crowd-catching public institution (financed by the Chicago Park Board), is one of the fastest rising zoo directors in the country: lean, grey-haired R. Marlin Perkins, who has devoted most of his 42 years to studying, mothering, training, understanding, exploiting and explaining specimens of the animal kingdom from blacksnakes to baboons.

"Intelligence Park." Perkins' job, like those of all his zoo-keeping colleagues, is solidly founded on the eternal attraction that the animal kingdom has for man. The zoo, as such, is an ancient institution. Like the Fourth of July firecracker, it was invented by the Chinese. They built their first zoo around 1100 B.C. and named it "Intelligence Park."

In the 20th Century, a zoo is many things. For some, it is still an intelligence park. The zoophilist can learn about the world from the animals he sees. For others it is a menagerie and a circus. It is a place for lovers, walking hand in hand; a place for old men to sit in the shade; a place for children and their insatiable search for knowledge.

On a hot summer day, it is a place to feel cool by watching the seals slither through the blue water. Looking at the monkeys, a zoogoer can conclude that they resemble the family in the apartment downstairs—or a family uncomfortably like his own. Looking at a tiger, he can feel weak, unarmed and humble; at a gorilla, helpless; at an echidna (a mammal that lays eggs), vastly superior. Zoo men have built their exhibits on the proposition that if the proper study of mankind is man, a subsidiary and equally wholesome occupation is the contemplation of the lower animals.

Across the Land. U.S. zoogoers are lucky; they have the best zoos in the world. Once the Germans ranked the field, but before World War II the Americans had outstripped them. Few cities of any size are without a zoo of some sort, and even the whistle stops have their single cages with a moth-eaten bear or a few monkeys.