432 



NATURE 



[June 9, 1910 



good luck, but he and his companion, Mr. James L. 

 Clark, were also possessed of singular courage and 

 skill both as photographers and marksmen, and, if 

 need be, mechanicians. Good luck gave them the 

 chance of a telephotograph of Kilimanjaro, eighty 

 miles distant, which is one of the weirdest mountain 

 pictures the present writer has even seen, and con- 

 firms his old story of twenty-five years ago that 

 Kilimanjaro, in certain aspects, resembled Swift's 

 floating-island of Laputa. Amongst other episodes 

 of singular good fortune was the photographing of 

 the still very rare black Forest pig. This creature, 

 the existence of which was rumoured by Stan- 

 ley, George Grenfell, and the present writer 

 in the Congo Forests, was actually first re- 

 vealed to science by Captain Meinertzhagen and Mr. 

 C. W. Hobley, far away from the Congo basin, on 

 the Nandi plateau and round Mount Kenia (though it 

 was soon afterwards obtained from the north-east 

 Congo, and finally from the Cameroons). But speci- 

 mens of it are still scarcer than those of the okapi, 

 and to have photographed the creature, 'wild and in its 

 forest home, is an episode that probably Mr. Dugmore 

 never anticipated, even in his rosiest anticipations. 



The book gives unrivalled pictures of the fauna of 

 Equatorial East Africa, of that singularly fascinating 

 region between Kilimanjaro on the south and the 

 Guaso Nyiro on the north, the Rift Valley on the 

 west and the Tana River on the east. Here there are 

 long ranges of mountains that only fall just short of 

 the level of perpetual snow, and there are the snow- 

 fields and glaciers of Kenya, rendered marvellously 

 well in Mr. Dugmore 's pictures. Immense grassy 

 plains, dense thorn scrubs, lakes peopled with flamin- 

 goes, splendid equatorial forests recalling those of 

 West Africa, deep water-courses or canyons, broad 

 rivers with great herds of hippopotami and monstrous 

 crocodiles, and patches of camel-frequented desert — 

 all these phases of physical geography are admirably 

 illustrated, in addition to the pictures of beasts, birds, 

 and indigenous mankind. We are getting almost 

 tired of lions since the advent on the scene of the 

 flash-light photographer : the lion and lioness, indeed, 

 seem to be almost like the popular actress or politician 

 in their desire and willingness to be photographed in 

 interesting attitudes. But although this Book has 

 some of the best lion pictures I have ever seen, it 

 will probably be more noteworthy for its photographs 

 of charging rhinoceroses, of buffaloes passing through 

 the long grass, or hiding themselves at noon-day in 

 dense forest. Another notable feature is the numerous 

 studies of giraffes, sometimes looking exactly like 

 withered tree stumps, at others suggesting pre- 

 historic monsters. The most striking of these giraffe 

 studies (and the most beautiful) is that where, by 

 means of a telephotograph, a large herd of giraffe, 

 and a smaller herd of Grant's zebra, are shown to- 

 gether in an immense tract of savannah country 

 dotted with acacias. If that does not suggest the 

 Pleistocene at its best, we do not know what does. 

 The geographical scope of the book extends far 

 enough north to include the Samburu and their 

 camels, camels which have suggested to more than 

 one observer, British or Italian, the possibility of their 

 being derived from a wild camel which may still exist 

 in the remotest, as yet completely unexplored, parts 

 of Galaland. 



The book opens with an appeal " to the lovers of 

 sport, and perhaps to those who consider themselves 

 as such, but whose only claim is the insatiate love 

 for killing which characterises their idea of sport." 

 The author goes on to state that, like many others 

 brought up to the use of firearms, he considered the 

 man who did not shoot a very inferior person, in 

 fact, unmanly. But as the years went by he himself 



NO. 2 1 19, VOL. 83] 



became more deeply interested in natural history, and 

 the idea of killing for killing's sake lost its fascina- 

 tion. In time he found that the most thrilling sport 

 of all was the studying of the life of animals in their 

 native wilds rather than in the killing of them merely 

 to possess the skin or other trophies. Enough is said 

 in his book to show that he and his companion ran, 

 perhaps, greater risks in their attempt to snapshot 

 charging rhinoceroses, lions, and buffaloes than 

 would the sportsman who was merely out to kill, 

 while the acrobatics necessitated in natural-history 

 photography are enough to prove that the follower of 

 this sport has to be a far more athletic and courageous 

 person than the mere shooter. 



Whether Mr. Dugmore will meet with any more 

 success in his appeal than has followed the work of 

 Mr. E. N. Buxton, and others of like persuasion is 

 a moot question. His unsurpassed photographs have 

 revealed once more the wonderland in bird and mam- 

 malian fauna represented in Inner East Africa, and 

 already a company, with an office in Piccadilly, has 

 issued a pamphlet on British East Africa, illustrated 

 by some of Mr. Dugmore 's photographs, which offers 

 every inducement to persons of both sexes to proceed 

 to East Africa "to shoot." In this pamphlet it is 

 stated that the report about the country being "shot 

 out " is far from the actual truth. (Nothing, so far as 

 I can see, is said about the attractions to the photo- 

 grapher.) In the list of animals which may be shot 

 under the ordinary licence (and in this the pamphlet 

 is not to blame, for it merely quotes official regula- 

 tions) is given " four egrets of each species." What 

 of its kind can be more monstrous than this? Egrets 

 — white herons — are quite uneatable, they are 

 supremely beautiful, and we now know — or ought to 

 know — that they are large consumers of noxious flies 

 — Glossina (tse-tse), Stomoxys, Tabanus — and all the 

 larger gnats. For this reason alone all these smaller 

 herons should be rigidly protected. 



H. H. Johnston. 



WIND STATISTICS AND AERONAUTICS. 



n^'HE practical interest shown in Germany in the 

 J- navigation of the air is widespread, and goes 

 hand in hand with a determination to utilise all 

 auxiliaries that promise to advance the subject. 

 Among such auxiliaries must be included the observa- 

 tions of wind which form part of the stock in trade 

 of the meteorologist. The " Motorluftschiff-Studien- 

 gesellschaft " of Berlin, founded in 1907 at the in- 

 stance of the German Emperor, has accordingly re- 

 quested Prof. Assmann, the director of the Aero 

 nautical Meteorological Observatory at Lindenberg, to] 

 undertake a detailed analysis of the wind data available 

 for the German Empire. The society has provided a 

 large part of the funds required for the work. The 

 results have now been published. They give average 

 values, generally for the twenty years 1S86-1905, for 

 forty-nine stations. The original schedules were pre-i 

 pared in the various offices which are responsible for 

 the meteorological work of the component States of 

 the Empire. The final discussion was undertaken 

 at Lindenberg under the direction of Prof. Assmann. 



Some idea of the magnitude of the work involved 

 may be gathered from the fact that the preparation 

 of the primary schedules is estimated to have occupied 

 about 2550 hours of clerk's time. It was decided tc* 

 limit the discussion to the Beaufort estimates of| 



1 " Die Winde in Deutschland." Im Auftrageder Motorluftschiff-Studien- 

 gesellschaft in Berlin. Bearbeitet von Rifhard Assmann. Pp. iv+48 ' 

 tafel xiii. (Braunschweig : F. Vieweg u^d Sohn.) Price 5 marks. 



" I Venti in Italia." Estratto d.iUa Rivista Tecnica di Aeronautica e' 

 Boll, della Soc. Aeronautica Italiana. Dott. Filippo Eredia, Meteorologista 

 al K. Ufficio di Meteorologia e Geodinamica. (Roma : Officina Poligrafica 

 Italiana, 1909.) 



