months, the School Bus programme has now been in operation for three years. A gaily decorated Volkswagen microbus carries eight or ten small animals; these usually include a chimpanzee, a woolly monkey, a cockatoo, a boa constrictor, a skunk, a rabbit, a young kangaroo, and a young llama, to the schools of the Philadelphia metropolitan area. William J. Maloney, Superintendent of the Daniel W. Dietrich Memorial Children’s Zoo, and a member of his staff give two or three talks each day, demonstrating the animals from school auditorium stages and then completing their presentation with a motion picture (in colour and with a sound track) depicting the larger animals that are not transportable.

This service‘is free, and when it was first an- nounced through adivisionof the Philadelphia Board of Education it was oversubscribed in three days. B o o h g s arenowscheduled solidly for ayear ahead. Theprogrammeoperatesfrom late October to early March, inclusive, and during that time an average of 35,000 school children see it. In addition to being widely hailed as an outstandmg educational contri- bution, d u s activity also aids in promoting attendance at the zoo and it keeps part of the staff and some of the animals busy during the quiet winter months. All American school buses bear the legend ‘ S C H O O L B U S - STOP’ on their rears. When the Zoo’s bus drives into a school yard, with ‘ S C H O O L BUS F O R A N I M A L S ’ lettered on it, it never fails to get a happy laugh from the children. In fact, the entire operation is now known officially as the ‘School Bus for Animals’ programme.

INFORMATIVE SIGNS I N THE ZOO by William Bridges

Curator of Publications, New York Zoological Society, US A

I D E N T I F I C A T I O N of animal exhlbits by cage labels giving common and scientific names, habitat and a few words of general informa- tion is, ofcourse, routine in zoological ardens. Various methods of presenting broa I f er con- cepts have been tried in the New York ZOG- logical Park, starting with special printed labels on, say, hummingbirds, that may be 500

words long. These have their place, but in order to present simple generalizations more effectively a series of text-and-picture signs, in colour, has been developed (see plates 31-33).

These signs may be hexagonal, wedge- shaped, oval, or even ‘free-form’, dependmg on the site. They are made of 4 in. plywood, painted both sides, and illustrations may be painted directly on the flat surface or on cut-outs applied to the flat surface for three-dimensional effect. Designs are made by departmental Curators and illustrations and lettering are done by a staffartist.

The only exception is a ‘Dead as the Dodo’ oval sign, silk-screened on & in. vinyl, with the text and drawing of the Dodo reversed to appear as white on black. This sign, promin- ently displayed throughout the Bronx Zoo, bears a small replica of a circle and arrow in red reading ‘An Endangered Species’. The same red symbol is attached to the cage labels ofanimals that are in need ofprotection.

N E W SIGNS I N THE COPENHAGEN ZOO

by Hoker Poulsen Curator of Birds, Copenhagen Zoological

Gardens, Denmark

F O R many yean, all the labels in our zoo were green enamelled signs with black letters. Some years ago we started looking for a tougher material. We also wantcd to make the signs more informative and by means of pictures of the animals give the public a chance of identifying the animals in enclosures where several species were kept together.

We now have an engraving machine so that we can reproduce signs on plastic plates. But at enclosures or aviaries where more than one species are to be seen we have labels with oil paintings of the animals on exhibition. During the last few years, two artists under the guidance of the curators have painted pictures of the species in question on masonite plates (12 cm. x 9 cm.), light grey in colour with the text in black. The text consists of the name of the species in Danish and the scientific name. The German and English names are also given in the interests of the many foreign