At Whipsnade

Few weeks ago King George. Queen Mary, the Duke & Duchess of York and Princess Elizabeth went down for the first time to Whipsnade in Bedfordshire. 34 mi. from London. There on English meadows thick with bluebells they saw wolves, bears, elephants, rheas taking their ease in what Britons hope will some day be the biggest, finest, most humane zoo in the world. A 50-acre park opened in 1931. it is arranged for the comfort of animals, not humans. Visitors must hike along fenced or ditched paths while animals roam at will through acres of field and forest. The royal party had tea on a clipped, sloping bit of" turf with lions lolling just below them in a huge, sandy-bottomed chalk pit. "Their Majesties expressed themselves," reported the Illustrated London News, "as specially pleased with the tameness of the animals." Last week a visitor's hat blew over the low double fence around the lion pit. Obligingly after it hopped one Stanley Stenson, 25, a zoo truck driver. His ami was stretched through the second fence when, like a cat after a bird, a lion leaped, sank its great fangs, pulled him down into the pit. Three other lions pounced. While onlookers screamed helplessly, the lions dragged Stanley Stenson off into a clump of English hawthorn, crunched him to death.

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