a. [f. ZOOLOGY + -ICAL; cf. prec.] Pertaining or relating to zoology; belonging or devoted to the scientific study of animals.
1815. Tweddell’s Rem., 190, note. His numerous zoological and botanical works.
1837. Whewell, Hist. Induct. Sci., III. 465. Molluscous animals had been placed too high in the zoological scale.
1839. Darwin, Voy. Beagle, vii. 152. We shall … have two zoological provinces strongly contrasted with each other.
1877. Coues, Fur-Bearing Anim., i. 2. The zoölogical characters by which it is distinguished from other Carnivorous Mammals.
b. Zoological Garden (usually Gardens), the gardens of the London Zoological Society, situated in Regent’s Park, London, in which the society’s collection of wild animals is housed (formerly colloquially abbreviated as ‘the Zoological,’ subsequently further shortened to ‘the Zoo’); hence gen. a garden or park in which wild animals are kept for public exhibition.
1829. T. Allen (title), A guide to the Zoological Gardens and museum.
1831. J. Jekyll, Corr. (1894), 279. I … passed three hours with some new foreigners at the Zoological, which is the best lounge of London.
1843. Comic Album, W 2 b/1. The parrots at the Zoological Gardens.
1854. Gosse, Aquarium, 13. The interesting exhibition opened to the public last year at the Zoological Gardens in the Regent’s Park.
1855. Poultry Chron., III. 416. The first annual exhibition of the Hull and East-Riding Poultry Society, took place on Wednesday, June 27th, at the Zoological Gardens, Hull.
1890. Burnand, Very Much Abroad, 122. After which I never gave any buns to the bears at the Zoological.
attrib. and Comb. 1843. Hood, in Mem. (1860), II. 152. Me, who have no more notion of engineering than a Zoological monkey of driving piles.
1858. Househ. Words, 18 Dec., 51/1. A whole zoological-garden-full of symptoms constantly making him uncomfortable.
c. transf. (sometimes humorous). Animal.
1855. Dickens, Holly-Tree, i. One of the apartments has a zoological papering on the walls, not so accurately joined but that the elephant occasionally rejoices in a tiger’s hind legs and tail, while the lion puts on a trunk and tusks.
1889. H. P. Liddon, Magnificat, iv. 91. Which is the nobler sort of ancestry—the purely zoological, or the spiritual?
1893. T. P. O’Connor, in Harper’s Mag., Dec., 39/2. There are legends of the crowing of roosters, and other strange and zoological sounds, in the hope of inducing the prolix orator to resume his seat.
Hence Zoologically adv., in a zoological way, in relation to zoology.
1819. W. Lawrence, Lect. Phys., etc. 249. The representations of all the animals being brought before Adam in the first instance, and subsequently of their being all collected in the ark, if we are to understand them as applied to the living inhabitants of the whole world, are zoologically impossible.
1845. Darwin, Voy. Nat., xvii. (1852), 393. This Archipelago [sc. the Galapagos Islands] … is zoologically part of America.
1869. A. R. Wallace, Malay Archip., I. i. 24. Borneo and New Guinea, as like physically as two distinct countries can be, are zoologically wide as the poles asunder.
