ANIMAL PHOTOGRAPHY 17 



nivorous, great and small. You must match your 

 intelligence, handicapped as it is by the somewhat 

 dulled senses of seeing and hearing and the almost 

 dead sense of smell, against those which have these 

 three senses most keenly developed, and whose 

 acute powers of reasoning should never be despised 

 by the hunter. It is, as I have stated, difficult to 

 say which pursuit affords the greater pleasure or 

 keener excitement. Each is splendid and each will 

 teach its many lessons to those who will but use 

 their eyes intelligently and not jump to conclusions 

 too hastily. Unfortunately this fault of hastiness is 

 only too common, especially in two kinds of people, 

 those who are too lazy to make their investigations 

 without a sufficient degree of thoroughness, and 

 those who by nature are impulsive and over- 

 enthusiastic. By such people, if they have but 

 the suggestion of a theory on which to work, 

 all incidents and conditions wiU be made to 

 fit this pre-estabhshed theory ; their eyes are 

 bUnded to all else. Mole-hills are turned into 

 mountains and conclusions will be reached which 

 have not the sHghtest foundation. No one has a 

 much better opportunity to study wild animals 

 in their native state than he who hunts with the 

 camera. Unlike the man who shoots and so destroys 

 the actual subject of his study, the camera-hunter is 

 frequently forced to spend many, many hours of 

 enforced inactivity whilst in the presence of the 

 animals, waiting, perhaps, for them to come within 

 range, to reach a place where stalking would be 

 possible, or where the light wiU be good— waiting 

 in fact for any of a dozen possible things to occur. 

 w.L.c. c 



