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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



outlying country in the daytime. Each 

 evening Dugmore set his flash-Hght cam- 

 eras at this water hole; these were con- 

 trolled on an electric circuit which 

 tripped the cameras and fired the flash 

 simultaneously — and it was here that 

 we had some of our most disheartening 

 trials. Before lea^'ing at dusk we would 

 make repeated tests of the working order 

 of cameras, batteries and flashes, but 



we were at a loss to understand this 

 mystery, but finally concluded that the 

 night birds in flying down and skimming 

 the surface of the water as they drank, 

 hit the string and fired the flash, but 

 since they were going at considerable 

 speed failed to leave a record on the 

 plate. 



This, with the fact that one night two 

 lions had rolled in the sand directlv on 



/'//()/() liy A. Itiulclyffe Dugmore 

 Lion with broken back impotently snarling. — When waiting in a blind for antelope Mr. Dugmore suddenly 

 found himself stalked by two lions eighty yards away, and was obliged to use a rifle instead of a camera, breaking 

 the back of one and knocking the other over 



afterward they would fail to act just at 

 the very moment when tripped by some 

 night prowler. 



For about ten days we were baffled 

 by most peculiar results. On several 

 mornings we found the flash fired and 

 upon developing the plates discovered a 

 perfect picture of the water hole itself, 

 but not the slightest sign of the creature 

 that had tripped the camera. For days 



the thread and that another time three 

 rhinoceroses had come down to drink 

 and, although stepping on the thread, 

 had failed to trip the switch, led Dug- 

 more to abandon the automatic principle 

 and adopt the method of sitting up and 

 watching from a near-by tree or con- 

 structed blind — the method by which 

 he finally secured his flash-light pictures 

 of lions and antelope. 



