  In April, 1906, Selous went all the way to Bosnia just to take the nest and eggs of the Nutcracker, and those who are not naturalists can scarcely understand such excessive enthusiasm. This little piece of wandering, however, seemed only an incentive to further restlessness, which he himself admits, and he was off again on July 12th to Western America for another hunt in the forests, this time on the South Fork of the MacMillan river. On August 5th he started from Whitehorse on the Yukon on his long canoe-journey down the river, for he wished to save the expense of taking the steamer to the mouth of the Pelly. He was accompanied by Charles Coghlan, who had been with him the previous year, and Roderick Thomas, a hard-bitten old traveller of the North-West. Selous found no difficulty in shooting the rapids on the Yukon, and had a pleasant trip in fine weather to Fort Selkirk, where he entered the Pelly on August 9th. Here he was lucky enough to kill a cow moose, and thus had an abundance of meat to take him on the long up-stream journey to the MacMillan mountains, which could only be effected by poling and towing. On August 18th he killed a lynx. At last, on August 28th, he reached a point on the South Fork of the MacMillan, where it became necessary to leave the canoe and pack provisions and outfit up to timber-line. Here almost immediately he killed a cow caribou for meat, and a comfortable camp was soon made. During the following days Selous hunted far and wide, and found that Osborn's caribou was as plentiful in these ranges as his friends in the previous year had found them. He killed six Before leaving the mountains he shot a good bull moose and missed another, whilst going down-stream, at 30 yards. A second shot, however, killed the animal, and gave the hunter another fine specimen with horns 63 inches across. Selous reached Selkirk on September 20th, and so had no difficulty in getting out before the ice formed. As soon as he got home he wrote to me telling of the results of his trip, and I give it as showing the sympathetic nature of his disposition for the sorrows of others:— "The first part of your letter awoke afresh all my sympathy for you and poor Mrs. Millais in your sorrow for the loss of your dearly beloved child. I suppose you can never hope to forget what you once possessed and can never have again, nor would you wish to do so; but time is merciful, and whilst never forgetting the sweetness of disposition of your dear child, the sorrow for her loss will gradually hurt you less and less. At least I trust it will be so. I am so glad to hear that you have got such a splendid lot of caribou heads this year. You well deserve them, for you have taken a lot of trouble to get them. You must now have quite a unique collection of Newfoundland caribou heads. I got one good moose this year 63½ inches spread (measured by Mr. Burlace the other day) and another pretty head of 52 inches spread. Besides these two I only saw one other bull moose—a fair-sized head. I saw a good many caribou, but no large heads. Every big bull I saw seemed to have a well-grown head. On August 29th I saw a single old bull and shot him. The next day I saw another bull with ten cows and shot him. These heads were both in velvet, but fully grown out and the velvet just ready to peel off. On September 1st I saw another single bull and In May, 1907, he went to Asia Minor to take the eggs of sea and raptorial birds, living on or near the Mediterranean coasts. In June he wrote: "I was very pleased to see the letter you wrote to the 'Field' about poor Arthur Neumann. I had thought of writing something myself, but did not know Arthur Neumann, the celebrated elephant-hunter, was born at Hockliffe Rectory, in Bedfordshire, in 1850. In 1868 he went to Natal and later to Swaziland, and acted as interpreter during the Zulu war in 1879. From 1885-1887 he hunted much in South Africa, and after a time went to East Africa, where he helped to survey the line from the coast to Lake Victoria Nyanza. After another visit to South Africa he made his first journey after elephants to the East of Mount Kenia and killed large numbers of bull elephants. In 1896 he was badly injured by a cow elephant, and returned to Mombasa in October, 1896. In 1899 he took part in the second Boer war, and in 1902 returned to East Africa and had another successful hunt, getting some immense tusks. In 1903-1904, hunting in Turkana, Turkwel and the Lorian swamp, he killed many elephants, and made his last expedition in 1905-1906, when his ivory realized £4500 on sale in London. He was a pioneer like Selous, and wherever he went made a favourable impression on the native—helping greatly to advance our hold on British East Africa. He died suddenly in 1907. In August, 1907, Selous went on a little hunt after reindeer in Norway, as the guest of his old friend, Captain P. B. Vanderbyl, a hunter who has had perhaps as great a general experience of big game hunting as any man living. In this trip Selous shot five good stags in seven days' hunting, but was not so fortunate as to get a first-class specimen, although some of his heads were good. Of this trip Captain Vanderbyl kindly sends me the following note: "Although friends of many years' standing, Selous and I only did one shooting-trip together, and that was after Reindeer in Norway. We sailed from Hull to Stavanger in August, 1907, and marched in with pack-ponies a few miles from the head of the Stavanger Fjord to Lyseheien, where a small shooting-box had been recently erected. "Owing "We arrived at Lyseheien a few days before the opening of the season, and spent the time walking after ryper, of which we used to get 12 or 15 brace a day, and although Selous was never a good shot with the gun, he showed the same keenness after the birds as he did for any form of sport. He had to leave Norway a few days before I did, in order to see his boys before they returned to school. "We were quite successful on this trip, and secured thirteen stags between us, with some good heads among them. When not hunting, we beguiled the time with some French novels Selous produced, and I never knew of his liking for this kind of literature before. "We both enjoyed the trip thoroughly, and were surprised to find so wild and unfrequented a hunting ground within about three days journey of London." During this season I was camped on the highest part of the range, some thirty miles to the north. A heavy snowstorm, lasting for six days, occurred on September 1st, and drove all the deer south-west to Lyseheien, which accounted in some measure for the excellent sport enjoyed by my friends. Reindeer are at all times subject to these sudden local migrations, and the very uncertainty of the sport makes it somewhat fascinating and difficult. In Norway it is now difficult to secure a good reindeer head for this reason, and the fact that indiscriminate poaching, even on what is called strictly preserved ground, prevails. During the winter of 1907 and early in the following year Selous devoted himself to finishing his book "African Nature Notes and Reminiscences" (published by Macmillan & Co. in 1908), a work which he wrote principally at the instigation of his friend, Theodore Roosevelt. In this he devotes the first two chapters to his views on protective coloration and the influence of environment on living organisms. For lucidity and accuracy of treatment he "It is a misfortune that in England and America the naturalists should at the moment have gotten into an absolutely fossilized condition of mind about such things as protective coloration. Both the English and the American scientific periodicals are under the control of men like Professor Poulton and others who treat certain zoological dogmas from a purely fetichistic standpoint, exactly as if they were mediÆval theologians. This is especially true of their attitude toward the doctrine of natural selection, and incidentally toward protective coloration. There is much in natural selection; there is much in protective coloration. But neither can be used to one-twentieth the extent that the neo-Darwinians, such as Mr. Wallace and the rest, have used them; indeed these neo-Darwinians have actually confused the doctrine of natural selection with the doctrine of evolution itself. "Heller is coming home soon. He has just written me from Berlin, where he saw our friend Matzchie who, you doubtless remember, has split up the African buffalo into some twenty different species, based on different curves of the horns. Matzchie told Heller that he had read my statement that of the four bulls I shot feeding together near the Nairobi Falls, the horns, according to Matzchie's theory, showed that there were at least two and perhaps three different species (among these four bulls from the same herd). Well, Matzchie absolutely announces that doubtless there were two species among them, because the locality is on the border-line between two distinct types of buffalo, that of Kenia and that of the Athi! I think this is one of the most delightful examples of the mania for species-splitting that I have ever seen. On the same basis Matzchie might just as well divide the African buffalo into a hundred species as into twenty; and as for the elephant he could make a new species for every hundred square miles. "Apparently "I am sending you herewith a rather long pamphlet I have published on the subject of protective coloration. Thayer answered the appendix to my 'African Game Trails,' in a popular Science Monthly article, re-stating and amplifying his absurdities. Men like Professor Poulton treat him with great seriousness, and indeed Professor Poulton is himself an extremist on this subject. I thought it would be worth while going into the subject more at length, and accordingly did so in the bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, and I send you a copy. I shall also send one to Stigand. Do write me about your experiences." Roosevelt was in a measure responsible for this excellent book, and it was due to his encouragement that Selous undertook its publication. He sent it in parts to his friend, who thus summarizes the author's literary style:— "I have been delighted with all the pieces you sent me, and have read and re-read them all. Do go on with your lion article. I earnestly wish you would now write a book describing a natural history of big game. You are the only man alive, so far as I know, who could do it. Take S.'s book, for instance, which you sent me. It is an excellent book in its way, but really it is only a kind of guide-book. The sole contribution to natural history which it contains is that about the wolves and the big sheep. But you have the most extraordinary power of seeing things with minute accuracy of detail, and then the equally necessary power to describe vividly and accurately what you have seen. I read S.'s book, and I have not the slightest idea how the sheep or the ibex or the deer look; but after reading your articles I can see the lions, not snarling but growling, with their lips covering their teeth, looking from side to side as one of them seeks to find what had hurt it, or throwing up its tail stiff in the air as it comes galloping forward in the charge. I can see the actual struggle as the lion kills a big ox or cow buffalo. I can see the buffalo bulls trotting forward, stupid and fierce-looking, but not dangerous unless molested, while "I was immensely interested in your description of these same wild hounds. And what a lesson you incidentally give as to the wisdom of refraining from dogmatizing about things that observers see differently. That experience of yours about running into the pack of wild hounds, which, nevertheless, as you point out, often run down antelopes that no horse can run down, is most extraordinary. I am equally struck by what you say as to the men who have run down cheetahs on horseback. Judging from what Sir Samuel Baker saw for instance, cheetahs must be able to go at least two feet to a horse's one for half a mile or so. I wonder if it is not possible that the men who succeeded in running them down were able to get a clear chase of two or three miles so as to wind them. If different observers had recorded the two sets of facts you give as to the speed of the wild hounds under different conditions, a great many people would have jumped to the conclusion that one of the two observers, whose stories seemed mutually contradictory, must have been telling what was not so. "Let me thank you again for the real pleasure you have given me by sending me these articles. Now do go on and write that book. Buxton and I and a great many other men can write ordinary books of trips in which we kill a few sheep or goat or bear or elk or deer; but nobody can write the natural history of big game as you can." Selous' intimacy with the President was of that charming character which unfortunately we now only associate with early Victorian days. They wrote real letters to one another of that heart-to-heart nature which only two men absorbed in similar tastes, and actuated by a similar intellectual outlook, can send as tributes of mind to mind. Such letters are ever a joy to the recipient; but once Selous seems to have over-expressed his concern, when the President was attacked and wounded by a would-be assassin. The answer is both characteristic and amusing. "My dear Selous, |
|
