PREFACE 7 



natural history of the great continent which occupies so 

 dominant a position in our thoughts is mainly owing to 

 a great Rhodesian naturalist, Mr. Guy A. K. Marshall ; 

 but a fruitful correspondence is also being carried on with 

 English naturalists in British East Africa, Uganda, British 

 Central Africa, Southern Nigeria and the Soudan. It is 

 a pleasure to reflect that years before we knew of the 

 great ideas for Oxford which were maturing in the mind 

 of Cecil Rhodes, the Hope Department was steadily making 

 itself recognized as a centre for the study of African 

 natural history. There is also great satisfaction in the 

 knowledge that so large a proportion of those who are 

 in touch with the Department are Oxford men, receiving 

 help and advice long after they have ceased to reside — 

 glad on their part to think that they are helping one of 

 the institutions of their University. 



The amount of work done in ten years is undoubtedly 

 encouraging, but there is an aspect of it which is the 

 reverse. The steady increase in the collections, due to the 

 work of the Department becoming more and more widely 

 known, has gradually occupied a larger and larger share of 

 my time and that of my Assistants, until finally we have 

 reached a point at which the accessions of each year can 

 barely be brought into a fit condition for cataloguing and 

 incorporation, while nothing is left for the vast mass of the 

 old collections, which imperatively demand a large amount 

 of attention. It is essential that the Department should 

 have further assistants with the mechanical skill necessary 

 for the manipulation of old and brittle specimens. I do 

 not wish to make too much of the demands upon my own 

 time and energy for work of a more or less mechanical 

 kind ; but it is the fact that I wrote over i,ooo letters for 

 the Department in the course of 1902. A considerable 



