162 SAVAGE SUDAN 



with quoting one, merely because it chances to be a subject 

 of discussion in The Field at the moment of writing 

 (December 1917). The frontlet and horns of an eland cow 

 abnormal, owing to the absence of a "spiral," but of a 

 recurrent type not unfamiliar to South-African hunters 

 had reached the British Museum. Their form puzzled our 

 closet - systematists and thereupon a new species, " Antilope 

 triangularis," was actually founded on this fragment by the 

 then Curator of the British Museum, Dr Giinther a German, 

 I presume. 1 Not quite content with this mad leap in the 

 dark, another accomplished zoologist proceeded to elevate the 

 phantom into a new genus, " Doratoceros triangularis " ! And 

 the scrap of bone that had inspired all this scientific banality 

 was only a deformed cow-eland after all ! Instances such as 

 these which read rather like Gilbert and Sullivan than serious 

 science induce a doubt of the intrinsic value of scientific 

 practice, of learned professors hovering around ready to pounce 

 on any insignificant fragment aliquid novi ex Africa or else- 

 where and evolving fantastic genera or species on evidence 

 that would not suffice to hang a flea ! 2 



I remember as a child being taken to a meeting of the 

 British Association, and meeting (with appropriate awe) a 

 Savant who I was told, and still believe was able, given a 

 single bone, to " reconstruct " the owner of that bone precisely 

 as the creature had lived in Pleistocene or other prehistoric 

 age. Such creative power impressed childish imagination 

 perhaps correctly, for there were giants in those days but 

 some fifty or sixty years of subsequent experience in such 

 matters has tended to subdue all too credulous faith. " Recon- 

 struction" on modern lines is as easy as falling off a log. 

 With light hearts we do it daily. But whether the reconstructed 

 creature bears a true resemblance or any to the original is 

 regarded as immaterial. No one knows : few seem to care. 



1 So long ago as 1887, Sir F. J. Jackson had shot a cow-eland of this 

 abnormal type on Kilimanjaro, in British East Africa, and presented the 

 skull and horns to the British Museum. Though Jackson knew the animal 

 to have been an eland, Dr Giinther insisted upon regarding it as an example 

 of his new " Triangularis " ! 



2 Needless to say these criticisms are directed solely against the sj stem 

 arraigned, and not against systematists personally. 



