INTRODUCTION 
Frrty years ago, when I was a schoolboy, I was a regular reader of 
a monthly magazine whose slogan was “Truth is stranger than 
fiction.” It had an intense appeal for me because the stories in it 
were true stories, peopled by real people who had real adventures 
and performed real feats of endurance and heroism. 
The Odyssey of an Annimal Collector, in which a very old 
friend and colleague * tells in his simple modest way the story of 
his own life, reminds me very vividly of those old-time tales. There 
was nothing exaggerated or sensational about them, nor will 
readers find this book packed with highly colored and sensational 
episodes. The author (Webbie to his many friends) writes as he 
talks, taking everything quietly in his stride. He makes the most 
arduous and hazardous search for some rare animal in a tropical 
jungle seem like a pleasant Sunday afternoon walk. 
His book is packed with solid facts and achievements and con- 
tains many new and original observations on the habits and 
physiology of animals. But do not imagine for a moment that it 
is a book for the zoologist only—it is a book which the general 
reader will find intensely interesting and instructive, and above 
all I commend it to the intelligent type of boy with a taste for 
adventure who wants to do something “out of the ordinary.” 
The Odyssey of an Animal Collector is an apt title, for this is 
what—after World War I—the author set out to become; first of 
all in a modest way by bringing home small collections of living 
birds for the pet departments of the great stores, then a period of 
specialization in ornithological rarities for rich amateurs and zoos, 
and—after World War IJ—becoming official collector to the 
Zoological Society of London, during which time he was mainly 
1 Webbie and I first met in an orchard in Mailly-Maillet during the Battle of the 
Somme in 1916. Derek McCulloch (Uncle Mac of the B.B.C.) was in that same orchard 
at the same time but we did not know it until years later when we met in “Children’s 
Hour,” to which both of us have made contributions. 
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