252 IN BRIGHTEST AFRICA 
When I returned to America in I911, my mind 
saturated with the beauty and the wonder of the 
continent I had left, I was dreaming of African Hall, 
One year later my ideas were sufficiently defined 
to be laid before Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, 
President of the American Museum of Natural 
History, who approved my plans and asked that they 
be presented to the Trustees of the Museum. The 
plan that I proposed to the Trustees provided for a 
great hall devoted entirely to Africa, which should 
put in permanent and artistic form a satisfying record 
of fast-disappearing fauna and give a comprehensive 
view of the topography of the continent by means of 
a series of groups constructed in the best museum 
technique. Neither in this nor in any other country 
has such an exhibit been attempted. Not only 
would the proposed hall preserve a unique record of 
African wild life, but it would also establish a stand- 
ard for museum exhibition in the future. 
The Trustees approved my plan for immediate 
execution; the undertaking was to go forward as 
rapidly as funds were available. One of the old 
North American mammal halls, rechristened the 
“elephant studio,” because there the mounting of the 
elephant group was already under way, was retained 
for my use and there, to crystallize my conception, I 
made a model of the African Hall. This model repre- 
sents a great unobstructed hall, in the centre of which 
stands a statuesque group of four African elephants 
with a group of rhinos at either end. Both on the 
ground floor and in the gallery, with windows seeming 
