Longleat House Children's Competition 2007

Longleat House 2007 Children's Competition 'Book Safari' results

CONGRATULATIONS to all the children who took part in the 2007 competition

The competition was based on a display of rare books from the Longleat libraries. The books, dating from 1614 to 1831, showed images of animals which can be seen in the Safari Park. Entrants were asked to think about which illustrations were not drawn from life, to chose one or more of these and give reasons for their selection.

The judges, Keith Harris, Head Warden of the Safari Park, and Rosemary Firman, Assistant Librarian, Longleat House, greatly enjoyed reading everyone's entries. After a great deal of deliberation, the following ten winners were selected. All of them provided thoughtful and well-expressed responses and showed that they enjoyed looking at the old pictures and comparing the animals with those in the Safari Park. Each winner has received a voucher for two adult and two child Longleat Passport Tickets for the 2008 season. We hope they all enjoy their return visits and look forward to seeing them again.

Winners

WELL DONE ALL OF YOU!

Here are extracts from the winning entries (spelling and punctuation are the writers' own). Below you can also read the true story of Ganda the rhinoceros, the inspiration for the illustration used in the competition.

From Hiob Ludolf, A New History of Ethiopia (London, 1682)

...Take for instance the giraffe. The illustrator has put a long haired mane in the picture and horns like a goat. Also the head is thinner than a real life giraffe and the spots are smaller and more evenly spaced. This makes it seem that the illustrator hasn't really seen the animal at all and perhaps they have had it described to them instead. This may be due to the fact that in the 17th and 18th centurys it was not so easy to travel around...

I visited the Safari Park today, my favourite animals were the giraffes. I escepecially liked Imogen. Looking at the illustrations in the book cabinet, the one picture that stood out to me as not being drawn from life was the giraffe as it appears to have what looks like horns and has a box like body, it does not come across as ellegant as the giraffes were in real life. Its face seems quite harsh but in real life I feel the giraffes faces were kind and beautiful...

From Edward Topsell, The History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents (London, 1658)

i think that the hippo looks too scary. his teeth are sharp but the ones at Longleat look nice even though the man said that they are dangerous.

I choose the hippo cos it looks cool in the picture. The hippo is made to look fierce and probably that's how you would draw it if someone discribed it to you and you never seen one before...

The hippo doesn't look like the one we saw at half mile lake yesterday. Hippo's don't have heads like the one in the painting. Their heads are rounder, and they don't have so many long, sharp teeth as that...

From Edward Topsell, The History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents (London, 1658)

The rhino because of his armour suit and 2 horns [accompanied by a drawing of how a rhino appears in real life].

From Hiob Ludolf, Ad suam Historiam Aethiopicam antehac editam commentarius (Frankfurt, 1691)

The true story of Ganda the rhinoceros

Ganda was born in India, in the region of Gujerat, and 'ganda' is the Gujerati word for rhinoceros. One day in the year 1515, the Sultan of Gujerat decided to send Ganda as a gift to the Portuguese governor of another part of India, and this man put Ganda on a ship bound for Portugal. The voyage took 120 days and on arrival Ganda was housed in the royal menagerie at the Ribeira Palace in Lisbon.

A rhinoceros had not been seen in Europe since Roman times and Ganda created a sensation. Letters describing this fantastic creature, some of which contained rough drawings, were sent all over Europe. One of the letters reached Nuremberg in Germany and was seen by the artist Albrecht Dürer. Dürer was intrigued and immediately made two drawings of the animal, one of which you can see in the British Museum in London today. From one of the drawings, Dürer made a woodcut from which many prints were made. Dürer's prints were copied by other artists and Dürer's image of the rhinoceros became the standard representation of the animal in Western art for the next 200 years. It appeared in many books, including Edward Topsell's The History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents, published in London in 1658, which is the source for our image.

But because Dürer had not seen the animal for himself, he made some mistakes. The rhino's skin looks like sheets of armour, it has scaly legs and a small extra horn on its back. Some people think that it may in fact have been wearing armour, made especially for it. But the plates of armour match the folds of skin found on an Indian rhinoceros very well.

The King of Portugal decided it would be interesting to see a fight between a rhinoceros and an elephant. He put Ganda in an arena with an elephant from the menagerie, but the elephant turned and ran away! The King then decided that Ganda would make a good gift for the Pope.

Ganda was given a new green velvet collar decorated with flowers and, amidst great celebrations, put on a ship bound for Rome. There was a sudden storm, the ship was wrecked as it approached Italy, and Ganda drowned.

However, Ganda lives on in the many pictures based on Dürer's woodcut, which is still reproduced today.

It was not until the 1740s that another rhino was widely seen in Europe. This one was called Clara. She was also from India and toured Europe for 17 years, before dying in London in 1758.

The herd, or 'crash', of rhinos at Longleat is made up of Southern White rhinos from Africa. They have wide lips and three toes on each foot. There are about 11,500 Southern White rhinos in the world, but only 13 Northern White rhinos survive.