COLLECTING LIVE ANIMALS IN LIBERIA 



By WILLIAM M. MANN 

 Director, National Zoological Park 



AND 



LUCILE Q. MANN 



The Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, of Akron, Ohio, financed 

 the Smithsonian-Firestone Expedition to Liberia, its purpose being 

 to collect and bring back live animals for the National Zoological 

 Park, as well as other specimens for the United States National 

 Museum. The party, consisting of the writers and Ralph Norris and 

 Roy Jennier, employees of the National Zoological Park, sailed in 

 February 1940 for Monrovia. We were greeted there by George 

 Seybold, in charge of the Firestone Plantations. He took us to his 

 home at Harbel, some 50 miles from the port, and there we made our 

 headquarters throughout our stay in the Republic. 



On such a trip as ours much depends on native assistance. Natives, 

 after all, are the best hunters and trappers. To get acquainted with 

 them, and to get them interested in the work we were doing and 

 the specimens that we wanted to obtain, we spent considerable time 

 in the interior on five different trips, walking from village to village, 

 where we camped. The Secretary of the Interior gave us a letter of 

 introduction to his Government officials, Paramount chiefs and others, 

 explaining what we were there for and asking them to help us. 



With the aid of the Firestone Plantations personnel we made a 

 number of drives for antelope. The Company is clearing vast areas of 

 land in order to plant rubber, and there were some isolated forests left. 

 We would surround one of these on one side with a line of rope nets, 

 and then the white managers, leading their troops of employees, 

 would form a ring and drive such animals as still remained in the 

 forest. The natives in a long line would advance shouting, and the 

 frightened animals running ahead of them would sometimes get 

 entangled in the net. In this way we obtained a number of antelopes, 

 among them three kinds of duikers seldom seen in captivity and at 

 present the only representatives of their species in captivity in the 

 United States or elsewhere. 



At Belleyella, 5 days' walk into the interior and near the French 

 Guinea frontier, we were shown much courtesy by Lieut. W. S. Wiles 

 and Sgt. Joseph Gibson of the Frontier Force, and W. M. Dennis, 

 of the Revenue Department. Realizing from the Explorers' Club 



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