APPENDICES 415 



To carry the war straight into the enemies' camp (which, 

 I read, is a sound military maxim), our friends, the enemy 

 aforesaid, have quoted against us several big-game hunters as 

 conforming to their theories. 



The reply is that there have always been hunters many of 

 them "hard-bitten" and highly skilled in their craft who 

 neither profess to study natural phenomena nor aspire to any 

 living interest in the animals they hunt beyond securing 

 " record heads " more's the pity ! Such men, on reading 

 articles propounded by our acknowledged authorities, and 

 clothed in terms as precise as they are fascinating, not un- 

 reasonably mistake hypothetical propaganda for proved facts. 

 In blind faith they accept a mere thesis as an established law 

 of Nature. Who is to " cast the first stone " ? The delinquents 

 include personal friends, and were I allowed, without offence, 

 to impute blame, it would be on the lines that, when these 

 innocent " Babes in the Wood " enjoy subsequent opportunities 

 to put that blind faith to the test, the whole subject is utterly 

 forgotten ! 



Now, should any self-conscious culprit read my book, let 

 him forgive me straightaway ; let him admit that the above is 

 the simple truth ; and promise to remember my humble hint ! 



Let every hunter in African wilds realise that it is in this 

 twentieth century a bounden duty incumbent upon him to 

 add, so far as in him lies, to our knowledge of an animal- 

 fauna which, while still in the full glory of existence, may 

 to future generations be but as a closed volume or a dream 

 that is gone. 



Well, we start with a " clean slate." Inscribe in one corner 

 all that array of lowly life reptilian, crustacean, insect, and other 

 which spends its ephemeral existence practically sedentary. 

 Such a schedule comprises caterpillars and chameleons ; 

 tortoises, tree-frogs, snails ; wood-lice ; bats and butterflies 

 at rest; moths, mantis, stick-insects, and thousands more of 

 that ilk. The sole protection of most of these lies virtually in 



of the American Museum of Natural History ', New York, August 191 1, which 

 is almost equally illuminative, but presenting to British students a difficulty 

 in that many examples are selected from transatlantic subjects which may 

 not be so familiar to ourselves. Another notable name is that of Major 

 C. H. Stigand. Alas ! that all these three should already have passed away. 



