In Wildest Africa -^ 



Only in this one region of the velt have I come upon this 

 exquisite bird {Tmetothylacus tenellus, Cal.), nowhere else 



Thus would I. spend day after day, getting to know 

 almost all the wild denizens of East Africa, either by seeing 

 them in the flesh or by studying their tracks and traces, 

 cherishing more and more the wish to be able to achieve 

 some record of all these beautiful phases of wild life. I 

 repeat : as a rule you will carry away with you but one or 

 another memory from your too brief day's wandering, but 

 there come days when a succession of marvellous pictures 

 seem to be unrolled before your gaze, as in an endless 

 panorama. It is the experience of one such day that I have 

 tried here to place on record. Professor Moebius is right 

 in what he says: "Esthetic views of animals are based not 

 upon knowledge of the physiological causes of their forms, 

 colouring, and methods of motion, but upon the impression 

 made upon the observer by their various features and out- 

 ward characteristics as parts of a harmonious whole. The 

 more the parts combine to effect this unity and harmony, 

 the more beautiful the animal seems to us." Similarly, a 

 landscape seems to me most impressive and harmonious 

 when it retains all its original elements. No section of its 

 flora or fauna can be removed without disturbing the 

 harmony of the whole. 



Within a few years, if this be not actually the case 

 already, all that I have here described so fully will no 

 longer be in existence along the banks of the Pangani. 

 When I myself first saw these things, often my thoughts 

 went back to those distant ages when in the lands now 

 known as Germany the same description of wild life was 



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