THE MIGHTIEST NIMROD OF MODERN TIMES. 355 
the man and his work, such as only an ardent admirer and enthu¬ 
siastic friend could have been moved to write; and, indeed, it would 
almost seem, from that admiring review, written by Colonel Roose¬ 
velt at that time, as though his acquaintance with the great Nimrod 
was what determined him upon devoting practically a year of his 
life to emulation of the African hunter’s deeds in the wilderness. 
Mr. Selous,” the occupant of the White House wrote, '' is the 
last of the big-game hunters of South Africa; the last of the mighty 
hunters whose experience lay in the greatest hunting ground which 
this world has seen since civilized man has appeared therein. 
'' There are still many happy hunting grounds to be found by 
adventure-loving wilderness wanderers of sufficient hardihood and 
prowess, and in Central Africa the hunting grounds are of a char¬ 
acter to satisfy the most exacting hunter of to-day. 
NATURALIST AS WELL AS HUNTER. 
Nevertheless, none of them quite equal South Africa as it 
once was, whether as regards the extraordinary multitude of big 
game animals, the extraordinary variety of the species or the bold 
attraction of the conditions under which the hunting was carried on. 
Mr. Selous is much more than a mere big-game hunter, how¬ 
ever; he is by instinct a keen field naturalist, an observer with a 
power of seeing and of remembering what he has seen; and, finally, 
he is a writer who possesses to a very marked and unusual degree 
the power vividly and accurately to put on paper his observations. 
Such a combination of qualities is rare indeed.” 
It was in this way that Colonel Roosevelt referred to the fact— 
probably unknown to nearly all Arnericans—that this is not the first 
occasion on which he himself has hunted in Africa, for he remarked, 
apropos of the subject of protective coloration: 
'' When a boy, shooting on the edges of the desert in Egypt, I 
was impressed with the fact that the sand grouse, rosy bullfinches, 
sand larks and sand chats all, in the coloration of their upper parts, 
harmonized strikingly with the surroundings, while the bold black 
and white chats were peculiarly noticeable, and yet, as far as I could 
see, held their own as well in the struggle for existence.” 
