FOREWORD x1 
occasions. We may find something base in animal 
nature if we seek it; we may also find much that is 
excellent and worthy of emulation. In this respect 
animal nature is like human nature—we may take 
our choice. The decadent sculptor and the decadent 
writer may choose the wrong side in human nature, 
and the sensational writer may choose the wrong side 
in animal nature; Akeley has chosen the ennobling 
side and does not dwell on the vices either of the 
animals or of the natives but on their virtues, their 
courage, defence of their young, devotion to the 
safety of their families—simple, homely virtues which 
are so much needed to-day in our civilization. 
Truthfulness is the high note of the enduring 
biographer of animal life as well as of human life. 
“Set down naught in malice, nothing extenuate” 
is an essential principle in the portrayal of vanishing 
‘Africa as it is in our portrayal of the contemporary 
manners and customs of modern society; to know 
the elephant, the lion, the antelope, the gorilla as 
they really are,-not as they have been pictured by 
sensational writers who have never seen them at 
close range or who have been tempted to exaggerate 
their danger for commercial reasons. Akeley’s work 
on the gorilla is the latest and perhaps his best por- 
trayal of animal life in Africa as it really is. He 
defends the reputation of this animal, which has been 
misrepresented in narrative and fiction as a ferocious 
biped that attacks man at every opportunity, ab- 
ducts native women as in the sculptures of Fremiet, 
a monster with all the vices of man and none of the 
