APPENDIX A 



THE WORK OF THE FIELD ZOOLOGIST AND FIELD 

 GEOGRAPHER IN SOUTH AMERICA 



Portions of South America are now entering on a career of great 

 social and industrial development. Much remains to be known, so far 

 as the outside world is concerned, of the social and industrial condi- 

 tions in the long-settled interior regions. More remains to be done, in 

 the way of pioneer exploring and of scientific work, in the great stretches 

 of virgin wilderness. The only two other continents where such work, 

 of like volume and value, remains to be done are Africa and Asia; 

 and neither Africa nor Asia offers a more inviting field for the best kind 

 of field worker in geographical exploration and in zoological, geological, 

 and paleontological investigation. The explorer is merely the most ad- 

 venturous kind of field geographer; and there are two or three points 

 worth keeping in mind in dealing with the South American work of the 

 field geographer and field zoologist. 



Roughly, the travellers who now visit (like those who for the past 

 century have visited) South America come in three categories — al- 

 though, of course, these categories are not divided by hard-and-fast 

 lines. 



First, there are the travellers who skirt the continent in comfortable 

 steamers, going from one great seaport to another, and occasionally tak- 

 ing a short railway journey to some big interior city not too far from 

 the coast. This is a trip well worth taking by all intelligent men and 

 women who can afford it; and it is being taken by such men and women 

 with increasing frequency. It entails no more difficulty than a similar 

 trip to the Mediterranean — than such a trip as that which Mark Twain 

 immortalized. It is a trip which to a learned and broad-minded ob- 

 server offers the same chance for acquiring knowledge and, if he is him- 

 self gifted with wisdom, the same chance of imparting his knowledge to 

 others that is offered by a trip of similar length through the larger 

 cities of Europe or the United States. Probably the best instance of 



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