10-10-2008
in the 1860s Frank Buckland (perhaps best renowned for trying to eat his way through the animal kingdom) tried to keep common porpoises at the Zoo on fifteen occasions. The first, on the 4th December 1862, had been caught at Brighton, sent by train to London and then put on a fishmonger's slab for half the day before the Zoo got hold of it. Buckland revived the animal with a bottle of "sal volatile and water" and two hours later with a "brandy and water", after which the porpoise was released into the Zoo's seal pond, to the seals' dismay. The porpoise was dead by the next day (it turned out the animal's capturers had beaten it in the head and put its eyes out before sending it to London). Seeing as how the porpoise had at least reached the Zoo alive, Buckland put out a request for anyone to capture a new one unharmed and send it his way. A second porpoise was obtained three months later, also at Brighton, but died soon after capture before even reaching the Zoo.In October 1863 a third was caught, in Lincolnshire, but this one also died soon after (and had, it turned out, also been deliberately blinded, apparently the usual fate of porpoises caught in fishermens' nets). Several other porpoises all met the same untimely deaths in attempts to send or keep them at the Zoo. One in December 1864 managed to survive a full month.
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