PREFACE 



THE chapters comprised in the present volume 

 were written at various times during the last ten 

 years. Some of them have already appeared in 

 print in the pages of the Field, Land and Water, 

 and other papers, but the majority have remained 

 in manuscript until now. The greatest part of the 

 matter in the chapters on the " Lion " was written 

 some years ago, and was intended to be the 

 commencement of a book dealing entirely with the 

 life-history of South African mammals. When, 

 however, I was asked by Mr. Rowland Ward to 

 contribute to a book he was about to publish on the 

 Great and Small Game of Africa, all the articles 

 in which would be written by men who had 

 personally studied the habits of the animals they 

 described, I gave up the idea of myself writing a 

 less comprehensive work on similar lines, and 

 became one of the chief contributors to Mr. Ward's 

 large and valuable publication. 



My manuscript notes on the lion and some other 

 animals were then consigned to the seclusion of a 

 drawer in my study, from which they would 

 probably never again have emerged had it not been 

 for the fact that during the autumn of 1905 I had 

 the honour to be the guest of President Roosevelt 

 at the White House in Washington. 



