PREFACE 



years in the region you wished to explore in every 

 sense of the word, and having completed its 

 geography by discovering the whole course of the 

 Pungwe\ 



When one thinks that you have sent or brought 

 back to the Museum more than twenty thousand 

 specimens of either animals, plants, or minerals, many 

 of which are entirely new, and one remembers that you 

 have prepared all the specimens of animals yourself 

 so that they might arrive in a good state of preserva- 

 tion, and that you kept a diary the whole time, and 

 have also furnished the Minister of Public Instruction 

 with several official reports, one wonders how you 

 were able to accomplish all this work and endure 

 such fatigue. I should be very ungrateful if I did not 

 here publicly renew to you the thanks of the St. 

 Hubert Club of France. Have you not also found time 

 to send me articles for our illustrated Review which 

 excited a well-merited interest, and have you not 

 made an invaluable gift to our great Society in offering 

 it your splendid series of trophies, which are to-day 

 the finest ornament of our Council Chamber ? 



Your fortnightly correspondence enabled me in some 

 measure to follow you step by step across the African 

 veldt, and your photographs, which I developed 

 as they came, illustrated your letters by shewing 

 me the country and the scenes of your exploits. You 

 have thus given me the pleasure of a voyage of dis- 

 covery, and I can, as it were, live over again for 

 myself the most noteworthy days of your life in 

 tropical Africa. 



If you had not published your book I had quite 

 decided to return you those letters, which you wrote 



(viii) 



