Hagenbeck Animal Show - Expo Chicago 1893

Passing here the portion of the south Sea Island Village, which extends this side of the Plaisance, the visitor next reaches the Hagenbeck Trained Animal Show. For this a large and beautiful building was erected, which houses the great menagerie, and in its centre is an arena surrounded by an auditorium with a capacity of 4,500 seats. The collection of animals is one of the finest in the world, and the feats which they are trained to perform are truly marvelous. In the last part of the performance a group of twenty animals, including lions, tigers, leopards, bears and dogs, are brought into the ring at the same time, made to take their appointed seats with becoming gravity, and afterward put through different performances, one by one and in groups. Other features of these performances are trained lion on horseback, and the trained pigs, which perform remarkably clever evolutions. Carl Hagenbeck is renowned the world over as the most successful of animal trainers, and also as the largest dealer in wild animals. From his collections have been supplied practically all the zoological gardens of the world. In the menagerie here there are twenty lions, two bengal tigers, one Polar bear, two black bears, a collection of the finest boar hounds ever brought to this country, beside a large number of young panthers, leopards, tigers, monkeys and parrots. There is also a very creditable ethnological exhibit, comprising New Caledonia, British Columbia, the South Sea Islands, Africa and the Indies, and contain a vast number of implements, hunting trophies, skins, etc. There is also an aquarium representing in miniature an imitation of the Indian Ocean, with wonderful plants and fishes in their proper places.

©The World's Columbian Exposition 1893