Recognition and Comradeship 



57 



specimens. He thus avoided a certain snub, for 

 Brown replied to all such letters in the same 

 strain, pointing out how his collection had been 

 got together at great labour and expense and could 

 not be removed from its setting, but it was open 

 for inspection by suitable arrangement. Instead 

 of making this initial faux pas Broom paid him 

 a telling compliment : he visited him. He took 

 the further precaution to get his medical colleague, 

 Dr. Kannemeyer, to go along with him and 

 introduce him to Brown. For Kannemeyer, that 

 other great South African Naturalist whose 

 praises have still to be sung, was a life-long 

 friend of Brown's, albeit something of a rival. 



These two cronies shared the same pursuit of 

 fossil-hunting and implement-collecting, and they 

 met on frequent occasions to compare notes and 

 finds. It is very amusing to read Browns 

 obviously naive account of these interviews. First 

 of all they exchanged genuine compliments, and 

 with good reason, for the one had nearly always 

 a bit of a new beast, that no other human eyes 

 but theirs had yet beheld, to show the other. 

 Then they fell to slightly jealous remarks about 

 the richness or poverty of their respective 

 hunting-grounds, the one in Aliwal, the other in 

 the neighbouring district of Burghersdorp ; and 

 there was something of an understanding that 



G 



