Zoo in the Garden: Book Review

Abstract

Zoo in the Garden is part of the Lost and Found Wildlife Series and although available through Permanent Black in 2005, these stories were first published in the late nineteenth century. Edward Hamilton Aitken, affectionately known to his readership as EHA, was Indian born, but a thoroughly British subject. The son of a Scottish missionary, he was educated at the Bombay University, now known as Mumbai University. Aitken was a career public servant employed in the Customs and Salt Department of the Bombay Government, taking up posts in Khargoda and Karachi of the Bombay Presidency. Aitken delved into Natural History in his leisure time and like countless other Europeans, he was an amateur at a time when the disciplines of science where becoming institutionalised. Aitken was a founding member of the Natural History Society of Bombay in 1883 and his writings demonstrate this grey area between popular renditions of life lived through the lens of Natural History and the more formal aspects of Imperial science.