162 
SAVAGE SUDAN 
with quoting one, merely because it chances to be a subject 
of discussion in The Field at the moment of writing 
(December 1917). The frontlet and horns of an eland cow— 
abnormal, owing to the absence of a “spiral,” but of a 
recurrent type not unfamiliar to South-African hunters— 
had reached the British Museum. Their form puzzled our 
closet - systematists and thereupon a new species , “Antilope 
triangularis,” was actually founded on this fragment by the 
then Curator of the British Museum, Dr Gunther—a German, 
I presume. 1 Not quite content with this mad leap in the 
dark, another accomplished zoologist proceeded to elevate the 
phantom into a new genus , “ Doratoceros triangularis ” ! And 
the scrap of bone that had inspired all this scientific banality 
was only a deformed cow-eland after all! Instances such as 
these—which read rather like Gilbert and Sullivan than serious 
science—induce a doubt of the intrinsic value of scientific 
practice, of learned professors hovering around ready to pounce 
on any insignificant fragment— aliquid novi ex Africa or else¬ 
where—and evolving fantastic genera or species on evidence 
that would not suffice to hang a flea! 2 
I remember as a child being taken to a meeting of the 
British Association, and meeting (with appropriate awe) a 
Savant who—I was told, and still believe—was able, given a 
single bone , to “ reconstruct ” the owner of that bone precisely 
as the creature had lived in Pleistocene or other prehistoric 
age. Such creative power impressed childish imagination— 
perhaps correctly, for there were giants in those days—but 
some fifty or sixty years of subsequent experience in such 
matters has tended to subdue all too credulous faith. “ Recon¬ 
struction” on modern lines is as easy as falling off a log. 
With light hearts we do it daily. But whether the reconstructed 
creature bears a true resemblance—or any—to the original is 
regarded as immaterial. No one knows : few seem to care. 
1 So long ago as 1887, Sir F. J. Jackson had shot a cow-eland of this 
abnormal type on Kilimanjaro, in British East Africa, and presented the 
skull and horns to the British Museum. Though Jackson knew the animal 
to have been an eland, Dr Gunther insisted upon regarding it as an example 
of his new “ Triangularis ” ! 
2 Needless to say these criticisms are directed solely against the system 
arraigned, and not against systematists personally. t ij / / 
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