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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



consisted chiefly in seeing, recording, 

 and interpreting facts which were 

 really obvious, but to which observers 

 hitherto had been blind, or which they 

 had misinterpreted partly because 

 sportsmen seemed incapable of seeing 

 anything except as a trophy, partly 

 because stay-at-home systematists never 

 saw anything at all except skins and 

 skulls which enabled them to give 

 Latin names to new "species" or "sub- 

 species," partly because collectors had 

 collected birds and beasts in precisely 

 the spirit in which other collectors as- 

 sembled postage stamps. 



I shall give a few instances. In mid- 

 Africa we came across a peculiar bat, 

 with a greenish body and slate blue 

 wings. Specimens of this bat had 

 often been collected. But I could find 

 no record of its really interesting hab- 

 its. It was not nocturnal ; it was hardly 

 even crepuscular. It hung from the 

 twigs of trees during the day and its 

 activities began rather early in the af- 

 ternoon. It did not fly continuously 

 in swallow fashion, according to the 

 usual bat custom. It behaved like a 

 phoebe or other flycatcher. It hung 

 from a twig until it saw an insect, then 

 swooped down, caught the insect, and 

 at once returned to the same or another 

 twig — just as a phoebe or peewee or 

 kingbird returns to its perch after a 

 similar flight. 



On the White Nile I hunted a kind 

 of handsome river antelope, the white- 

 withered or saddle-backed lechwi. It 

 had been known for flfty years to trophy- 

 seeking sportsmen, and to closet natu- 

 ralists, some of whom had called it a 

 kob and others a water buck. Its near- 

 est kinsman was in reality the ordinary 

 lechwi, which dwelt far off to the south, 

 along the Zambezi. But during that 

 half century no hunter or closet natu- 

 ralist had grasped this obvious fact. I 

 had never seen the Zambezi lechwi, but 

 I had carefully read the account of its 

 habits by Selous — a real hunter-natu- 

 ralist, faunal naturalist. As soon as I 

 came across the White Nile river bucks, 



and observed their habits, I said to my 

 companions that they were undoubt- 

 edly lechwis; I wrote this to Selous, 

 and to another English hunter-natu- 

 ralist, Migand ; and even a slight exam- 

 ination of the heads and skins when 

 compared with those of the other 

 lechwi and of the kobs and water bucks 

 proved that I was right. 



A larger, but equally obvious group 

 of facts was that connected with con- 

 cealing and revealing coloration. As 

 eminent a naturalist as Wallace, and 

 innumerable men of less note, had in- 

 dulged in every conceivable vagary of 

 speculative theory on the subject, 

 largely based on supposed correlation 

 between the habits and the shape or 

 color patterns of big animals which, as 

 a matter of fact, they had never seen in 

 a state of nature. While in Africa I 

 studied the question in the field, 

 observing countless individuals of big 

 beasts and birds, and comparing the 

 results with what I had observed of the 

 big game and the birds of North Amer- 

 ica (the result being borne out by what 

 I later observed in South America). In 

 a special chapter of the Life Histories 

 of African Game Animals, as well as in 

 a special number of the American Mu- 

 seum Bulletin} I set forth the facts thus 

 observed and the conclusions inevitably 

 to be deduced from them. All that I 

 thus set forth, and all the conclusions 

 I deduced, belonged to the obvious ; but 

 that there was need of thus setting 

 forth the obvious was sufficiently shown 

 by the simple fact that large numbers 

 of persons refused to accept it even 

 when set forth. 



I do not think there is much else for 

 me to say about my anything but im- 

 portant work as a naturalist. But per- 

 haps I may say further that while my 

 interest in natural history has added 

 very little to my sum of achievement, it 

 has added immeasurably to my sum of 

 enjoyment in life. 



^ Revealing and Concealing Coloration in Birds 

 and Mammals, Bulletin of the American Museum 

 of Natural History, Vol. XXX, Art. VIII, pp. 

 119-231, Aug., 1911. 



