2 TAXIDERMY AND ZOOLOGICAL COLLECTING. 



Even in South Africa, where big 1 game once existed in count- 

 less thousands, nothing remains of the larger species save a few 

 insignificant springboks, and no game worth mentioning can be 

 found nearer than the Limpopo Valley, eight hundred miles 

 north of the Cape! 



Noiu is the time to collect. A little later it will cost a great 

 deal more, and the collector will get a great deal less. Sports- 

 men, pot-hunters, and breech-loading firearms are increasing in 

 all parts of the world much faster than the game to be shot, and 

 it is my firm belief that the time will come when the majority 

 of the vertebrate species now inhabiting the earth in a wild 

 state will be either totally exterminated, or exist only under 

 protection. 



But do not launch out as a collector until you know how to 

 collect. The observance of this principle would have saved the 

 useless slaughter of tens of thousands of living creatures, and 

 prevented the accumulation of tons upon tons of useless rub- 

 bish in the zoological museums of the world. It costs just as 

 much to collect and caro for scientific rubbish as it would to do 

 the same by an equal number of scientific treasures. Between 

 fool collectors on one hand, and inartistic taxidermists on the 

 other, the great majority of the world's zoological museums 

 have been filled with objects that are anything but attractive ; 

 and for this state of affairs the collectors are more to blame 

 than the taxidermists. 



Bad work in collecting is, in nine cases out of ten, due to one 

 of two causes ignorance or laziness. By some curious process 

 of reasoning, many really intelligent men conclude that they 

 can go into the field and collect successfully without having 

 learned a single thing about methods, or asked a word of advice 

 from a competent instructor. Many seem to think that the only 

 thing required is main strength, and that even that may be exert- 

 ed by proxy. Even now, men who have travelled and written 

 books go to South America and dry all their skins in the sun 

 after having carefully removed all the leg bones and their 

 small skeletons they boil ! 



Some of the worst mammal skins I ever saw were made by a 

 professor of natural history, who actually managed to do nearly 

 everything as it should not have been done. And yet, collect- 



