542 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIII. No. 588. 



and moving plea for the salvation of at least 

 a remnant of the great Tertiary fauna of 

 Africa — the lions and elephants, the hippo- 

 potami and rhinoceroses, the zebras, giraffes 

 and big antelopes, which have all but vanished 

 from South Africa, and which are now rap- 

 idly falling before the bullets of both whites 

 and blacks all along the equatorial belt. The 

 fate of these great beasts and many others 

 besides is in the balance, and the history of the 

 American buffalo is already being repeated in 

 one section after another of the dark con- 

 tinent. 



The world will, indeed, become very unin- 

 teresting if, as the author of the introduction 

 remarks, man and a few domestic animals, 

 with the mouse, the rat and the sparrow, are 

 the only survivors among terrestrial verte- 

 brates. 



As an illustration of the reckless slaughter 

 of the big animals by white travelers or tem- 

 porary residents, the case of a certain German 

 doctor is mentioned, who in the course of two 

 or three years of fanatical zeal killed one hun- 

 dred and fifty rhinoceroses (a companion 

 having killed one hundred and forty more), 

 and all for no useful purpose, " each one be- 

 ing a far more interesting mammal than him- 

 self. At the end of this career of slaughter, 

 a rhinoceros killed him — ^perhaps appropri- 

 ately." Notwithstanding such onslaughts, 

 Herr Schillings thinks that the rhinoceros 

 will survive, to impale such prodigies of hu- 

 man greed and folly, for generations to come, 

 because of their fierce habits, their great 

 numbers, and the inaccessible character of 

 the mountain fastnesses over which they 

 range. It would seem as if nothing short of 

 disarming the native, and international legis- 

 lation could save anything more than' a rem- 

 nant of those atnazing hosts of interesting 

 animal forms, which it has taken nature long 

 geological ages to bring to perfection. The 

 natives, equipped by the white traders, have 

 already devastated South Africa. The white- 

 tailed gnu, the true quagga, the mountain 

 zebra, the Cape buffalo, the elephant, black 

 and white rhinoceroses, the giraffe, the hippo- 

 potamus and the South African ostrich have 

 been totally wiped out there with the excep- 



tion of a few preserved individuals. The 

 retreating squadrons have reached their limits 

 under the equator. There they must be pre- 

 served now, if at all, for in a few years it wiU 

 be too late. 



While Herr Schillings disclaims any skill 

 as an artist, his pictures reveal an artistic 

 appreciation, and he is able to describe the 

 scenes which he has witnessed with admirable 

 vividness and enthusiasm. The great velt, 

 the mysterious wonder-world of German East 

 Africa, which, as he declares, must forever 

 remain a forbidden and uninhabited land to 

 the northern races of Europe, with its annual 

 succession of flood and drought, and corre- 

 sponding periods of rapid vegetable growth 

 and decadent life, burning the traveler by 

 day and almost freezing him at night, its 

 pestilential marshes, its arid, salt-encrusted 

 plains, its diversified surface and scenei-y, sug- 

 gesting in places, during the wet season, great 

 open parks in England and northern Europe, 

 in others presenting perfect chevaux-de-frise 

 of thorn bushes, impassable to every animal 

 but a mouse or an elephant; flat in some 

 places, in others undulating, with broken hills, 

 lofty tablelands, volcanoes and almost in- 

 terminable mountain ranges, the highest peak 

 of which, Kilimanjaro, rises 19,500 feet above 

 the sea, is crowned with eternal snow, and 

 bears a whole upper world of glaciers under 

 the tropical sun. 



The most celebrated animals of the equa- 

 torial fauna, all of which Schillings has 

 hunted, photographed and studied at close 

 range, the great-tusked elephant, the fierce 

 rhinoceros, the saber-like horns of which in 

 old cows are sometimes nearly five feet long, 

 the hippopotamus, the lion, the leopard, 

 dreaded for its stealth and swift attacks, the 

 fleet zebras and gnus, the strange giraffes, 

 hyenas and antelopes of many kinds stalk 

 through his pages in all the semblance of life, 

 and, as a German zoologist has remarked, will 

 live on in some of his admirable pictures 

 ' long after they have been sacrificed to the 

 needs of advancing civilization.' We see the 

 largest of these, the elephants and rhinoc- 

 eroses, in their endless migrations between 

 the high mountains and the plains, following 



