hesitatingly state that its great wariness. and nocturnal habits effectually protect it from being stalked by white men. Those who can rightfully claim to have seen a living Okapi, or to have shot one, have been so favored quite accidentally." We never yet have heard of an Okapi having been shot by a white man; but of course there is always a "first time." Meanwhile, it is a pleasure to contemplate one species that does not seem marked for quick extermination by the deadly paleface of civilization. But how is it about the menace of savagery?

From the slings and arrows of outrageous natives the Okapi is not by any means secure. The concealed pit-traps and the big leg-snares of the relentless and deadly meat-hungry natives are catching Okapis, big and little, just like shelling peas. Both those methods are very successful and very destructive. When an Okapi is caught, either in a pit or with a big noose of bark rope around one leg,

Mr. Lang says that the natives are very good about giving to interested white men the fresh skins of Okapis. Once as a culmination of great efforts, both white and black, the most famous native Okapi hunter actually caught and delivered to Mr. Lang, for the New York Zoological Park, a live Okapi calf! The emergency milk-supply from cans was all right, but a continuous fresh supply soon became a matter of life or death. In a radius of thirty miles that whole Ituri hinterland was unable to produce enough free milk to keep that one little but wonderful calf alive beyond its first ten days of captivity.

Once, however, about 1920, a young living Okapi was successfully transported to Europe, where it lived for about six weeks in the Antwerp Zoological Gardens. Probably it never fully recovered from the rigors and fatigues of its long and severe journey from the Ituri Forest to Belgium. As a living exhibit to show in the temper

never has been seen in captivity, either in Europe or America. The species was a long time in the books before one was killed by a white man. On the great African hunting adventure of ex-President Roosevelt two fine specimens (male and female) fell to the trusty and persistent rifle of Captain Kermit on the Mau Escarpment, Kenya Province, East Africa. Luckily for him he found a place where some small Bongo bands elected to graze in the daytime, in rocky but fairly open country, wherein it was possible to see them first.

The trouble with the Bongo lies in the fact that it is terribly alert and afraid of man. It lives usually at from six thousand to eight thousand feet elevation, and rarely in open country. When occasionally found openly among rocks and shot at, it speeds away, up and up, for more height, rougher rocks, and more security. Ordinarily the Bongo is a devoted lover of dense, dark, and damp jungles high up in the world. Mr. E. Blaney Percival, of Kenia Province, a man who knows, says that if you want to get a Bongo you must go prepared to camp on his trail and stick to it for days; and that when you get his head as a trophy you can prize it as proof of wet, cold, and hard work.

The Bongo of Central and West Africa is of the same species as the Eastern one, but with a range from the Ituri Forest clear westward to the Atlantic coast. It comes within the class of large African Antelopes, and it is decidedly handsome. In size I should say that it is as heavy as the East African sable antelope, but shorter in the legs, like its stockily built bushbuck relatives. The shoulder height of Kermit Roosevelt's male specimen was 44 inches, but big males sometimes grow to 48 inches. The longest horn length is 391⁄2 inches, and the greatest circumference is 12 inches.

For twenty years the Giant Forest Hog of Kenia Province and the great Equatorial Forest of Central Africa has been a thorn in my flesh. First, we couldn't get it; and, last, when we could get it the sumptuary laws of the United States wouldn't let us have it! Our Bureau of Animal Industry will not lower the bars to permit a live one to enter for fear the immigrants will try to smuggle in some

new and unnecessary parasites or swine diseases that will further diminish the ranks of the sacred American hog.

By another coincidence, close after the Okapi and Bongo, this big, black, and ugly devil hog appeared on the horizon. His discovery in 1904 went off with a bang, and reverberated from several quarters at once. He leaped full-fledged into the arena of big and bad African wild animals, and found none blacker than himself. So far as we are aware, this spectacular animal never once has been caught alive. It is all that this slow world can do to see one dead.

As its name implies, and as we may safely infer, the new Giant Forest Hog is the largest of all the wild-swine species of the world. In hair, eyes, and bare-skin surfaces it is fully as black as Erebus. A fine specimen shot near the Channa River, Central Africa, by Charles Cottar, is thus described by him in Outdoor Life Magazine:

"Their long, glossy coat of black contains not a hair of a different hue, and the deep black extends over all the mucous membranes. The teeth are black, and the eyes are as glossy black as a pair of beads of glass. But the extremely large mouth almost robs them of the appearance of the swine. Instead of the long, tapering muzzle, the mouth is almost as broad as the head at the eyes, and the lips taper down to a thin sharp edge, capable of cutting the tender vines and young bamboo on which the animal feeds exclusively."

The flesh measurements of Mr. Cottar's big specimen were as follows: Shoulder height, 3 feet 4 inches; length over all (including an 11-inch tail), 8 feet 2 inches; girth of body at middle, 8 feet 4 inches.

The Wanderobo natives say the Giant Forest Hog is voiceless, and Mr. Cottar confirms this even after witnessing a hard fight between two big males, neither of which uttered a sound.

This remarkable animal has been, since 1904, so diligently exploited that it is now known to inhabit the great Central African rain forest from Mount Kenia down the Congo basin, and across to the Atlantic coast. The accompanying illustration is from a photograph of the fine mounted group on exhibition in the Amer

ican Museum of Natural History, the specimens for which were collected by Alfred J. Klein.

The Chinese Takin is another big animal of which a Crow Indian would say, "Heap no-see-'um"; which means mighty little known. Like the Giant Panda, it has few relations, and they issue no publications. In the London Zoo there once lived a related species, the Mishmi Takin, from Tibet, just north of northeastern India; but the Takin now before us is different and unknown there.

Imagine, if you can, a coarse-haired and monstrously overgrown gray goat, with some very ungoat-like details. This is a genuine wild-animal oddity, as queer as the musk-ox, prong-horned antelope, or white mountain goat. It is 50 inches high at the shoulder, with a girth of 65 inches, and a weight on the hoof of at least 600 pounds. Imagine a big and heavy body, legs thick and clumsy like those of a musk-ox, hoofs like those of a domestic cow, and horns that suggest those of a hartebeest. Our longest horn is 195% inches long, with a basal circumference of 111⁄2 inches, and the pair spread 191⁄2 inches between tips.

With highly commendable zoological enterprise in 1908 Honorable Mason Mitchell, then United States consul at Chung Kiang, China, made a long and laborious hunting trip into the Province of Szechuan, near the southwestern border of China. That took him into the home of the big and queer and littleknown Chinese Takin. Four fine adult male specimens were collected by Mr. Mitchell, and presented to four mu

seums.

He found that the Takin of his quest lives in rough, mountainous, and thinly forested country, and sometimes forms herds of as many as two hundred head. To the sportsman or naturalist who can win to them they are not extremely difficult to kill. Animals that go in large herds seldom are.

By speaking of the Giraffes I am reminded of another tender subject, and the dulness of the human mind.

The giraffes form a striking chapter of zoological revelations that were slow on the draw. To a layman their markings seem good for differentials up to a quarterVOL. LXXXII.-38

mile of distance; but alas! poor Yorick! The big-game hunter seems fated to have his zoological prizes remain incognito on the veldt, and be "discovered" by the pent-up museum investigator who has eyes with which to see stripes and spots, and teeth and horns as they really are.

In eastern Africa between the Cape and the confluence of the Nile there are five well-defined species of Giraffe. The Cape and the Nubian species have been known for many years. The three species that in their colors and markings are the most striking and beautiful are the Reticulated, Uganda, and Masai, "discovered" respectively in 1899, 1903, and 1898.

Ever since I saw in the Jardin d'Acclimatation of Paris, in 1896, a fine adult Reticulated Giraffe I have ardently desired and ceaselessly demanded of collectors and dealers a giraffe of that species. To me it is tremendously interesting. It was rightly named the Latin equivalent of Netted Giraffe. It is a warm light-brown animal with (what looks like) a bigmeshed net of snow-white rope thrown over it, and skilfully fitted to the neck and body. Of all the markings of striped and spotted animals this is, to me, the most fascinating. In my mind's eye, Horatio, I see Dame Nature throwing that white net over her last giraffe species, and ordering her stripe artists to reproduce it permanently on the giraffes of northern Kenia.

There is not one good reason why American sportsmen and animal dealers have not by this time brought a round dozen of living Reticulated (i. e., "netted") Giraffes to New York. If caught with judgment and handled with intelligence, a giraffe of this heretofore unseen species would live long, and do credit to its author and purveyor. And then the beautiful Masai species! That also should be caught and brought here, numerously. Now that the war is over, and it is no longer "c'est la guerre," there is no excuse for the giraffe famine that for fourteen years has prevailed.

To the millions of friends and followers of the giraffes it will be a satisfaction to know that in Kenia Province the one that is scandalously rich in giraffes of three species-the business of provincial game protection is so well done by Cap

tain Keith Cauldwell, Mr. E. Blaney Percival, and others that giraffes are really on the increase, and in some localities are now delightfully abundant. Many fine movie photographs of giraffes have been taken, and more will be. Know also that the African buffalo has quite come back from the slaughter by rinderpest that struck British East Africa in 1890. The Grant Zebra is a well-established pest (to farmers), and the case it has created is being treated with leaden pills.

But for Kipling's six-word reference in the "Feet of the Young Men" to "a head of Ovis Poli" I think that great and rare wild sheep of eastern Turkestan would have remained obscure in America until Theodore and Kermit Roosevelt went after it in 1925. If a living specimen ever was exhibited in a zoo outside of India we never heard of it.

The Marco Polo Sheep was discovered about 1256 by Marco Polo, and it stands to-day as the best-known monument to that doughty and veracious traveller. Its permanent post-office address is Kashgar, and it lives on the mountain rim of the highest, coldest, and most God-forsaken mountain plateau to be found this side of the two frigid zones. It is the woodshed of the "Roof of the World," and the hunting-ground has a mean elevation of 16,000 to 17,000 feet.

The Roosevelts found plenty of Ovis Poli in the mountain barrier range between southwestern Turkestan and the Russian Pamir, midway between Kashgar and Gilgit. Those mountains are of the rounded-summit type, and the elevation of the sheep is between 15,000 and 17,000 feet.

Ovis Poli does not inhabit Matterhorn and Jungfrau country. Everywhere the precipice mountains are too well stocked with impossible crags and precipices for mountain-sheep purposes. All wild sheep love best the rounded summits, such as sheep and white hunters can negotiate without too much disgrace. Like other wild sheep, and also goats, the Poli sheep are very expert in not "leaping from crag to crag." In fact, very few wild sheep have any love for the really bad and disreputable crags. For family use they are too difficult and dangerous, and the getaway chances for hunted sheep are too

limited. But there are wild goats that just naturally love them.

Ovis Poli's horns are his best publicity asset. The biggest ones are almost impossible to believe. They are not, however, so splendidly massive as the horns of the Siberian Argali Sheep, in which Nature's vaulting ambition sometimes overleaps itself. (Fancy sheep horns of 19 or 20 inches circumference at the base, and a length on the curve of 50 inches.) The specialty of the Ovis Poli is total length of horns on the curve and width of spread between tips. Who can believe that a horn of mortal sheep ever reached the amazing length of six feet? Fortunately the pattern is slender, or Ovis Poli could not get away with his horns. The greatest circumferences run from 15 inches up to a solitary specimen of 17 inches.

Rowland Ward's last volume of "Records of Big Game" gives the measurements of thirty-eight Ovis Poli horns that measure (on the curves) above 60 inches, six of 70 inches and above, and a topnotcher (once owned by Lord Roberts) of the staggering length of 75 inches! Of those "record" horns, only four pairs are in public museums. All the others are frozen fast in private collections. The stature of Ovis Poli is not up to the standard set by the horns of the adult male. To match horns of even 60 inches each, the animal should be as big as our wapiti, whereas I think it is about the size of our mule-deer.

It is too bad that of the truly grand wild sheep of the Old World, the Aoudad, or Barbary wild sheep, of North Africa is the only species that thrives and lives long and breeds in zoological-park captivity, All the other big ones die early and often; but the beautiful little Mouflon we have with us always, and the Burrhel we have sometimes.

In addition to the wholly-unseen-alive species of our dreams, there are others that we have seen in babyhood, but which we never, never have seen, or are likely to see, in a state of big, dangerous, and awesome full maturity. It fills us with regret to know very well that there is not one chance in a thousand that any American zoological park will ever show a twentyfoot sea-elephant of Kerguelen or South