78 



NATURE 



[November 17, 1910 



With the speeches delivered at the Muhammadan 

 University of Cairo and at the Guildhall, London, 

 the reviewer in Nature has nothing to do, since they 

 treat of politics, but he thinks they are out of place 

 in a natural history book. They should have been 

 published with the next volume of Mr. Roosevelt's 

 public speeches, and with thorn should have been 

 given the other side of the picture, the things he also 

 observed but did not mention publicly, or, if he did so, 

 were not reported bv patriotic British stenographers or 

 editors. As it is, these speeches do not give by any 

 means a full statement of Mr. Roosevelt's views on 

 Egypt. As to the "pig-skin library," it is perhaps a 

 dangerous thing for a person of the world-wide in- 

 fluence of Theodore Roosevelt to set up an index 

 commendatorius of books ancient and modern, with 

 the inference that books dealing with the subjects he 

 prefers, but not mentioned by him, are not worth the 

 traveller's attention. 



The fact is, that a second edition of this work should 



Photo:, 



Fig. I. — The Reticulated Giraffe. From "African Game Trail 



be broug^ht out, stripped of these unnecessary appen- 

 dices and the at first necessary, but after wearisome, 

 records of thanks and obligations to a hundred-and- 

 one personages. We should like to see Mr. Roose- 

 velt's book take its place in the ranks with Bates's 

 "Naturalist on the Amazons," Schillings's "With 

 Flashlight and Rifle," and works of such character. 

 He is a g^ood zoolog-ist and a peculiarly accurate and 

 discriminating observer. Although he has traversed 

 lands visited already by some of the great naturalist- 

 explorers of the world, he has still made discoveries 

 himself, or through others, and records a great many 

 facts not hitherto known about the life-history of 

 beasts and birds in equatorial East Africa. He is 

 careful to note the seasons at which the young of 

 different antelopes and other large game appear. He 

 brings home to us, as no previous traveller has done, 

 the extent to which this wild game is persecuted and 

 infested ■\vith ticks, to which, however, they seem to 

 have become so habituated that they dread them much 



NO. 2142, VOL. 85] 



less than the biting-flies, though the ticks are prob- 

 ably quite as much spreaders of disease, and even 

 where they do not introduce disease germs must be 

 extraordinarily weakening as blood-suckers. Many 

 birds are devoting themselves in Africa to little else 

 than the picking off and eating of the ticks and flies 

 that infest the mammals. Where these birds are killed 

 by European sportsmen, a g^reat deal of future trouble 

 is no doubt being prepared for us. For example 

 (though 1 do not think this is mentioned by Mr. 

 Roosevelt), certain types of heron (egret) are perpetu- 

 ally snapping at tsetse-flies, or other flies, which 

 settle on oxen or game, and, if fully protected, might 

 account for a considerable proportion of these disease- 

 carrying creatures. 



He has much that is new and interesting to say on 

 the subject of the chita hunting-cat, really a little- 

 known and little-studied carnivore in its wild state, 

 both in Asia and Africa. The ordinary rhinoceros and 

 :ts funny habits receive full illustration at his hands, 

 and the square-lipped, white 

 rhinoceros is revealed to us in 

 Its gentler, less aggressive dis- 

 position, as well as its asso- 

 ciation with the white egrets 

 which, in accompanying it fur 

 its protection from ticks, whiten 

 its broad back with their 

 guano. (May this fact, equally 

 possible in South Africa with 

 the same kind of white heron, 

 be an explanation of the other- 

 wise absurd description " white 

 rhinoceros"?) He pictures it 

 for us in words, sitting down 

 on its haunches like a dog (and, 

 like its relation, the tapir), and 

 shows us that due importance 

 in dp'^cription and pictures has 

 not hitherto been given to the 

 hump over its vertebrae at the 

 shoulders. Grevy's zebra and 

 the northern type of Equus 

 biircheUi (Grant's zebra) are 

 rightly contrasted in appear- 

 ance, habits, and cry. Some 

 other peculiar features in both 

 zebras, not hitherto recorded by 

 naturalists, are set down here. 

 Besides a good description of 

 the vivid colours of the topi, 

 or bastard hartebeest, he tells 

 us that he has met with forms 

 of the topi which develop a 

 white blaze on the forehead. 

 This is possibly a local sport, but is interesting as be- 

 ing a parallel to the white forehead of a southern type 

 of topi, the blesbok. (This white forehead would seem 

 to arise from exaggeration of the two white, frontal 

 chevron marks which are liable to occur and re-occur 

 in certain types of hartebeest and gnu.) 



Mr. Roosevelt gives interesting particulars as re- 

 gards the lion's method of killing most of the large'- 

 antelopes and zebra by springing on the back and 

 biting through the vertebrae of the neck. It is pos- 

 sible that in the case of the stronger zebras or wiM 

 asses, the lion flings himself on to the neck itself and 

 drags down the animal's head, biting at the vertebree 

 not far from the base of the skull. (This is well illus- 

 trated bv a drawing in Mr. Millais's "Breath from 

 the Veld.") In the case of full-grown buffalo, the 

 lion's attack is generally made in concert, two or 

 three voung male lions, or a lion and lioness, working 

 together, but also with the same object of severing 

 the neck vertebras. Failing this, attempts are made 



[Theodore Roosevelt. 



