WORK FOR NATURALISTS 155 



loads and arrange for the several divisions, in which it 

 was necessary that so large a party should attempt the 

 long wilderness march, through a country where there 

 was not much food for man or beast, and where it was 

 always possible to run into a district in which fatal 

 cattle or horse diseases were prevalent. Fiala, with his 

 usual efficiency, took charge of handling the outfit of 

 the American portion of the expedition, with Sigg as 

 an active and useful assistant. Harper, who, like the 

 others, worked with whole-hearted zeal and cheerful- 

 ness, also helped him, except when he was engaged in 

 helping the naturalists. The two latter, Cherrie and 

 Miller, had so far done the hardest and the best work of 

 the expedition. They had collected about a thousand 

 birds and two hundred and fifty mammals. It was not 

 probable that they would do as well during the re- 

 mainder of our trip, for we intended thenceforth to 

 halt as little, and march as steadily, as the country, the 

 weather, and the condition of our means of transporta- 

 tion permitted. I kept continually wishing that they 

 had more time in which to study the absorbingly inter- 

 esting life-histories of the beautiful and wonderful 

 beasts and birds we were all the time seeing. Every 

 first-rate museum must still employ competent collectors ; 

 but I think that a museum could now confer most last- 

 ing benefit, and could do work of most permanent good, 

 by sending out into the immense wildernesses, where 

 wild nature is at her best, trained observers with the 

 gift of recording what they have observed. Such men 

 should be collectors, for collecting is still necessary ; but 

 they should also, and indeed primarily, be able them- 

 selves to see, and to set vividly before the eyes of others, 

 the full life-histories of the creatures that dwell in the 

 waste spaces of the world. 



