Inever dreamed that my book With Flashlight and Rifle—alike in its German and its English and American editions—would receive everywhere so kind a welcome, or that it would make for me so many new friends, both at home and abroad.

I have been encouraged by this success to give a fresh series of my studies of African wild life and of my “Nature Documents,” as Dr. Ludwig Heck has designated my photographs, in the present work.

I should like to express my gratitude once again to all those who, in one way or another, have furthered my labours in connection with these two books, especially to Dr. Heck himself and the other men of eminence and learning whose names I mentioned in my preface to With Flashlight and Rifle. A complete list of all my kind helpers and well-wishers would be too long to print here. I am deeply indebted, too, to the many correspondents—men of note and young schoolboys alike—who have written to me to express their appreciation of my achievements. Their praises have gone to my heart. I owe a special word of thanks to President Roosevelt, who smoothed the way for my book in the United States by his reference to me in his own volume Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter. I take the more pleasure in discharging this debt in that I had long derived intense enjoyment from President Roosevelt’s masterly descriptions of wild life and sport in America. President Roosevelt has always been one of the foremost pioneers in the movement for the preservation of nature in all its forms, and has made every possible use of the resources placed at his disposal by his high position to further this end.

This new book of mine is in form a series of impressions and sketches, loosely strung together; but it will serve, I hope, indirectly to win over my readers to the one underlying idea—the idea upon which I harp so often—of the importance of taking active steps to prevent the complete extermination of wild life.

Like With Flashlight and Rifle, this supplementary work can claim to stand out from the ranks of all other volumes of the kind as regards the character of its illustrations. All those photographs which I have taken myself are reproduced from the original negatives without retouching of any kind. Every single one, therefore, is an absolutely trustworthy record of a scene visible at a given hour upon the African velt by day or by night. I insist upon this point because herein lie both the value and the fascination of my pictures.

In his introduction to the English edition of With Flashlight and Rifle Sir Harry Johnston declares that that work was “bound to produce nostalgia in the lines of returned veterans”; I trust that In Wildest Africa will bring also to such readers a breath from the wilderness awaking in them memories of exciting experiences on the velt. Above all, I trust that its appeal will be not to grown readers alone, but that it will have still stronger attractions for the coming generation.

A preface should not be too long. I shall conclude with the expression of the hope that I may be able presently to secure a new collection of “Nature Documents.”

C. G. SCHILLINGS.