APPENDIX E 
PROTECTIVE COLORATION 
Mr. Dugmore has made a wonderful series of photographs of African 
big game. Mr. Kearton has made a series of moving pictures of various 
big animals which were taken alive by Buffalo Jones and his two cow¬ 
boys, Loveless and Meany, on his recent trip to East Africa; a trip on 
which they were accompanied by a former member of my regiment, Guy 
Scull. All three men are old-time Westerners and plainsmen, skilled in 
handling both horse and rope. They took their big, powerful, thoroughly 
trained cow horses with them, and roped and captured a lioness, a rhi¬ 
noceros, a giraffe, and other animals. I regard these feats of my three 
fellow-countrymen as surpassing any feats which can possibly be per¬ 
formed by men who hunt with the rifle. 
For the natural history of African big game, probably the three most 
valuable books—certainly the most valuable modern books—are Selous’s 
“African Nature Notes,” Schilling’s “Flashlight and Rifle,” and Millais’s 
“ Breath from the Veldt.” The photographer plays an exceedingly valuable 
part in nature study, but our appreciation of the great value of this part 
must never lead us into forgetting that as a rule even the best photograph 
renders its highest service when treated as material for the best picture, 
instead of as a substitute for the best picture; and that the picture it¬ 
self, important though it is, comes entirely secondary to the text in any 
book worthy of serious consideration either from the stand-point of science 
or the stand-point of literature. Of course this does not mean any failure 
to appreciate the absolute importance of photographs—of Mr. Dugmore’s 
capital photographs, for instance; what I desire is merely that we keep 
in mind, when books are treated seriously, the relative values of the pho¬ 
tograph, the picture, and the text. The text again, to be of the highest 
worth, must be good both in form and in substance; that is, the writer 
who tells us of the habits of big game must be a man of ample nersonal 
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