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A MAN WITH A VISION

Stamford Raffles was born aboard a ship off the coast of Jamaica in 1781. (36)________ of attending university, he worked for the East India Company (37)________ a clerk and studied hard in his spare time. At the age of thirty, he became lieutenant governor of Java, (38)________ he employed zoologists and botanists (39)________ discover all they could about the animals and plants on the islands. Raffles himself acquired a large collection of animals, (40)_______ a Malayan sun bear that was brought up with his children. The bear often joined Raffles for dinner, eating fruit and drinking champagne.

On a trip to Europe in 1817, Raffles visited a scientific institution for the study of plants and animals. It was this visit that gave him the idea for the forming of a collection of living animals. (41)________ founding the colony of Singapore in 1819, Raffles (42)________ together with several influential scientists and aristocrats who listened carefully to the ideas he so strongly believed in. Raffles (43)________ in convincing these people that his ideas were sound and they voted him president of the Zoological Society of London. Raffles died suddenly (44)________ a stroke in 1826. Sadly, the man whose idea was to start London Zoo did not see (45)________ opening two years later in 1828.