The New York herald., 1922-07-30
By ELIZABETH ANN ENGLAND

By ELIZABETH ANN ENGLAND
HyEMPORARILY lodged in high
brick loft buildings on the
old Bowery on their way to
a permanent home in the United
States are the strangest, the most
brilliant and the most savage immi-
grants that have recently entered
the country: immigrants not affect
ed by the per cent. law, travellers
from all continents that have come
here captive in cages for the amaze
ment and amusement of the nation.
At these way stations for wild ami
mails, exotic spots in that gray
stretch of dreary street between
Cooper Union and Chatham Square,
all the ZOOS and all the circuses buy
beasts Here film directors hunt for
animal actors, the organ grlnder
finds a better ringtail than he ever
owned before. and the hawk faced
fortune telling market woman buys
a sulphur crested cockatoo to pose
all day in a cluttered city street.
World. Greatest Animal Market.
Here hospitals and laboratories
send for monkeys by the hundred
In the course of year more cana
ries are cleared here and sent on to
inland dealers than in any other
street on this side of the globe. No
less than a hundred thousand are
handled in a good season. Finches
from half the countries of the world,
parrakeets and Java sparrows sing
and COO and twitter their first new
world notes in this smudged and
slandered and down t-the-h cor
nar of Manhattan before they pass
on to become pets in the private
aviaries of bird lovers. OF all the
strange traffics that once linked this
street with the ports of all conti-
nents only this one is left. 1t is
flourishing now as it never flour
ished before. In the wild animal
trade New York's> Bowery ranks as
the worlds greatest wholesale mar
ket center.
Bahia, on the coast of Brazil; Ben
gal. in India; port towns of Ceylon
and Australia, inland camps on the
Mongolian plains, villages back in
the Hartz Mountains and trading
stations on the African veldt are
everyday names down there. names
as familiar to the men who work in
the sunny whitewashed buildings
where the animals stay as the names
Harlem and Brooklyn are to the rest
of New York. In clean cages, well
kept, are creatures that have per-
haps brought with them memories
of every sort of swamp and every
sort of sunrise on the globe.
They are we'll quartered. Few
apartments are more scrupulously
renovated than are the upper floors
where common young monkeys are
kept, eating and chattering and
having running and jumping matches
and also face making contests when
they see strange visitors. Here they
wait while they learn their fate.
Some of the common monkeys are
doomed to die. If fortune follows
them they may escape. but very
many go to the hospitals, in the pub
lie health service. for use chiefly in
experimental work for the preven-
ton Of disease.
The monkeys fare no better on the
Bowery shan do the birds. In the
summertime on the bird floors hun
dreds of parrots and macaws and
cockatoos preen themselves while
they stand in brilliant rows. spread
ing their wings and taking short
flights-great splashes of tropical
color against a whitewashed wall
Snakes live here too and some may
be found all the year round in deep
cages covered with close heavy wire
netting. No poisonous snakes are
handled by al New York dealer as
part of his ret liar stock. Venomous
snakes are not common counter
goods. But the crushers are, and
they are far from harmless. To one