18 IN BRIGHTEST AFRICA 
who would have the vision to plan groups and the 
skill to model them and who would be furnished with 
skilled assistance in the making of the manikins and 
accessories and in the mounting of the animals. And 
it seemed as if the dream were about to come true. 
About this time I had a conference with Dr. Herman 
Bumpus, then director of the American Museum of 
Natural History in New York. He told me that he 
had then at the museum a young man named James 
Clark who could model but who did not know the 
technique of making manikins and mounting animals. 
The result of our talk was that Clark came out to > 
my shop in Chicago and together we went through 
the whole process, mounting a doe which now stands 
in the American Museum. But the old museum 
trouble broke out again. It cost a lot to mount 
animals in the method which Clark brought back. 
So there was pressure to reduce the cost and, under 
this pressure, the methods, in the words of O. Henry, 
“were damaged by improvements.” However, in 
the course of time it was demonstrated that while 
it often happens that an honest effort to make a thing 
better often makes it cheaper also, an effort merely 
to cheapen a thing very seldom makes it better. 
In the meanwhile, in 1905, I went to Africa again, 
to collect zodlogical material for the Field Museum. 
Again, in 1909, I went, this time for the American 
Museum of Natural History. I stayed two years, 
studying elephants, lions, and lion spearing. When 
I got back and set to work mounting the elephant 
group in the American Museum in New York, I dis- 
