894 A SPORTSMAN AND NATURALIST, 



Theodore Roosevelt had received many letters from the United 

 States containing all kinds of requests, with which it was impossible 

 for him to comply, and which it was equally impossible for him even 

 to answer. He had no private secretary, and excepting once or 

 twice when a personal friend had enabled him to catch up with some 

 of his mail by typewriting for him, he had been obliged to leave the 

 great bulk of these letters unanswered. 



The petitions were of every conceivable nature, including 

 requests for live wild animals for zoological gardens; for skins of 

 dead animals; for large snakes; for birds' eggs; for teeth and claws 

 of lions and tigers (the writers evidently not knowing that there 

 are no tigers in Africa and that it would utterly spoil the value of 

 any specimen, whether for scientific or other purposes, to mutilate 

 it by taking out the claws and teeth) ; requests for plants, for picture 

 post cards, which are naturally not to be found in the African 

 wilderness, and for all kinds of other objects, including even 

 pickled meat and dried meat of game. 



TROPHIES OF THE HUNTING EXPEDITION. 



Twenty casks and nine cases containing trophies of the Roose- 

 velt hunting expedition in Africa arrived in Washington August 19. 

 The shipment, which comprised Colonel Roosevelt's first month's 

 collection, consisted of eighty-two specimens, as follows: Lions, 7; 

 leopard, i ; cheetah, i ; spotted hyena, i ; Cape Hartebeest, 14; white 

 bearded wildebeest, 5 ; Neumann steinbuck, 5 ; Kirk dik-dik, i ; 

 common waterbuck, 3; Chanler reedbuck, 4; Grant gazelle, 9; 

 Thomson gazelle, 5; eland, i; Cape bufifalo, 4; giraffe, 3; hippo- 

 potamus, I ; wart hog, 6; Burchell zebra, 7; black rhinoceros, 2, and 

 impalla, 2. 



The cheetah is similar to a leopard, the wildbeest is the African 

 gnu and the hartebeest, steinbuck, dik-dik, impalla and eland are 

 varieties of antelope. While no new species, so far as is now 

 known, was included in this first Roosevelt shipment, the collection 

 will supplement materially the specimens already in the National 

 Museum. It is unusual to secure so large a variety of mammals in 

 so short a time. 



