APPENDIX E 
PROTECTIVE COLORATION 
Mr. Dugmore has taken a wonderful series of photographs of 
African big game. Mr. Kearton has taken a series of moving 
pictures of various big animals which were taken alive by Buffalo 
Jones and his two cowboys, 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 rhinoceros, 
a giraffe, and other animals. I regard these feats of my three 
fellow-countrymen as surpassing any feats which can possibly be 
performed 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 44 African Nature Notes,” Schilling’s 44 Flash¬ 
light and Rifle,” and Millais’s 44 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 itself, important though it is, comes entirely secondary 
to the text in any book worthy of serious consideration either from 
the standpoint of science or the standpoint of literature. Of 
course this does not mean any failure to appreciate the absolute 
importance of photographs—of Mr. Dugmore’s capital photo¬ 
graphs, for instance; what I desire is merely that we keep in 
mind, when books are treated seriously, the relative values of the 
photograph, 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 personal experience, of trained mind, of keen powers 
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