Colonel Roosevelt in Africa. 
The annual meeting of the Boone and 
Crockett Club was held on the evening of Tues¬ 
day, Jan. 24, in the Council Chamber of the 
University Club, in New York. President 
Wadsworth presided. After the reading of var¬ 
ious reports came the election of officers, which 
resulted in a choice of the officers of the pre¬ 
ceding year, except that Winthrop Chanler 
resigned as Vice-President for New York, his 
place being taken by Theodore Roosevelt. 
New members of the Executive Committee 
elected were E. Hubert Litchfield and Dr. 
Lewis Rutherford Morris. The report of the 
Game Preservation Committee was read by J. 
Walter Wood, who, as a supplementary report, 
read the announcement about the new antelope 
from there, largely through the efforts of Dr. 
Mearns, Mr. Heller and J. Alden Loring, 
nearly 9,000 specimens of birds and small mam¬ 
mals, 2,000 specimens of reptiles and fishes, 
and nearly 1,000 large mammals; in other 
words, between 11,000 and 12,000 specimens, 
among which there were many new genera and 
species. Most people who make expeditions to 
Africa go there to hunt the big game, and it 
is the trophies of big game which they bring 
back with them to the world centers. Few ex¬ 
peditions have been sent out with the idea of 
collecting the small mammalian life of the region, 
and so that life has remained largely unknown. 
A large number of new rodents, insectivores 
and small carnivores were found, and good 
series of many forms were secured. A little 
mouse, similar in appearance to our white-footed 
other species named, absolutely contradict, ac¬ 
cording to Colonel Roosevelt’s observations, 
the conclusions drawn by Mr. Thayer. The 
speaker announced his belief that not a few 
animals and birds are protectively colored, but 
declined to accept conclusions offered with re¬ 
gard to many African species, as well as with 
regard to certain American animals, such as the 
prong-horned antelope. Some questions asked 
by members threatened to open a general dis¬ 
cussion of this subject, for which, of course, 
there was no time. 
Colonel Roosevelt spoke of the arms used 
on his trip and said that for most of his hunt¬ 
ing he used American rifles, taken with him from 
this side, although friends in England had pre¬ 
sented him with a double-barrel rifle of Eng¬ 
lish make. With the army Springfield gun of 
BIRDS ON PELICAN ISLAND, INDIAN RIVER, FLORIDA. 
herds, printed last week in Forest and 
Stream. 
At the close of the meeting, members and 
guests to the number of about fifty-five sat 
down to dinner. Mr. Wood offered a resolu¬ 
tion expressing the thanks of the club to Major 
L. M. Brett, First Cavalry, Acting Superintend¬ 
ent of the Yellowstone Park, for the care and 
interest that he had devoted to the work of 
capturing the antelope for the new herds. The 
resolution was unanimously adopted. 
At the end of the dinner, the president hav¬ 
ing rapped for order, said, “It is hardly neces¬ 
sary for me to introduce to you the founder of 
the club.” When the applause had died down, 
Col. Roosevelt began a long and interesting 
account of his African trip. The latter part of 
the address was illustrated by lantern slides of 
some remarkable pictures taken by Kermit 
Roosevelt. 
After a jocular allusion to the fact that many 
good people supposed that he delighted only 
in blood and slaughter, the speaker explained 
that he had gone to Africa not primarily as a 
big-game hunter, but as the leader of a scien¬ 
tific expedition which, he believed, had resulted 
in the greatest single contribution to our 
knowledge of the life of East Africa that had 
ever been made. There had been brought back 
mouse, was common, and shrews were found 
abundant under the equator, not alone high up 
on the mountains, but also down in. the lowlands. 
A diurnal bat, blue and yellow in color, which 
has the extraordinary habit of hanging on a 
twig in an acacia tree, dropping down when 
it sees an insect—swooping after it, in fact, 
as one of our small flycatchers would swoop— 
and then returning to its twig or one nearby 
and hanging itself up again, until some other 
prey appears. 
Tflere were queer big-eared foxes, once 
thought to be peculiar to South Africa, whose 
teeth show affinities with long extinct flesh 
eaters, that wandered about at night and could 
be taken only by shining their eyes with a light. 
A great number of interesting observations on 
the life histories of many small mammals were 
made by the naturalists connected with the ex¬ 
pedition. Only a beginning has as yet been 
made toward working up these collections, but 
there is much material available. 
Colonel Roosevelt had much to say about the 
theory of protective coloration, so fully gone 
into in a recent volume by Abbott H. Thayer. 
He disagreed wholly with Mr. Thayer’s con¬ 
clusions so far as many of the African large 
mammals are concerned. The hartebeeste 
wildebeeste, zebra, Thompson’s gazelle and 
small caliber, using full-jacketed, sharp-pointed 
bullets, he had killed much big game up to the 
size of the rhino. 
The question as to which species of large 
game is the most dangerous—one over which 
there has been much discussion and which will 
probably never be settled—was referred to. 
From his own limited experience, Colonel 
Roosevelt is disposed to regard the lion as the 
most dangerous animal, the buffalo next, 
the elephant third, and the rhino fourth. He 
recognized, however, that many men of great 
experience placed the animals in a different 
order and spoke a word of warning against 
the common tendency to generalize from lim¬ 
ited experience. 
It is always difficult to infer the motive which 
influences an animal when it runs in a given di¬ 
rection. A beast may often run directly toward 
the hunter, who imagines it to be charging 
him, yet it may be unconscious of his presence. 
He told of being charged by a wounded hippo, 
but this took place in a narrow bay, the hippo 
being on the landward side, while the boat was 
toward the open and deep water, and the 
speaker could not make up his mind whether 
the animal was charging the boat, or only try¬ 
ing to escape to the lake. 
A recently returned African traveler told of 
