"Gerry Durrell was, to use the modern idiom, Magic. You imbibe it in his books, you feel it in his Zoo, you see it in the eyes of his trainees, and you hear it in even the most restrained tones of zoo directors, who may command budgets ten times the size that he ever did. Magic people, as all well read children know, are especially susceptible to mortal dangers and Gerry was no exception, but, before it finally ran out, he sprinkled his Magic in such vast quantities, that much of it has germinated, and hundreds of good gardeners are feeding the new growth as if their lives, and the lives of other animals depend upon it — and indeed they do."