GROUP OF ’MBEGA MONKEYS, WITH THEIR WHITE-COATED YOUNG
(FIRST DISCOVERED BY THE AUTHOR).
LETTER FROM PROFESSOR P. MATSCHIE, THE LEADING AUTHORITY ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE MAMMALIA OF GERMAN EAST AFRICA.
Other countries, America for instance, set us a glorious example. There you see public collections formed, affording panoramas of animal life so splendid, so beautiful, and planned on such grand lines, that the love of nature must be lighted up in the hearts of all who visit them.
What can be saved of these disappearing treasures must suffice for all time, and must in part at least be preserved in fire and thief-proof “zoological treasuries,” for it will be impossible to obtain such things again in the future, no matter what efforts may be made. Thus a great and difficult task presents itself to our museums. We can rightly require of them that they shall not merely exhibit the principal species of the animal world, but that they shall also preserve specimens of the most striking representatives of our still surviving fauna that are likely soon to become extinct. And these specimens must be guarded by all the resources of art and science against light and any other influence that might injure them. For such a far-seeing policy posterity will be grateful to us.
It seems, however, as though some unlucky star presided over the collecting of the larger species of the animal world. Let any one devote himself to these special pursuits and objects, and even if he win thereby the approval of experts and of wide circles of the public, still a certain odium will seem to attach to him. Obviously he must kill a certain number of animals, that are often quite unknown till then, and in almost every case have been hardly studied at all, in order that he may add them to the collections belonging to his native country. He gains the gratitude of science and of the learned, but he has to encounter the prejudices of others. People think that they are justified in throwing upon him, the scientific collector, the reproach of being an exterminator.
C. G. Schillings, phot.
A ‘MBEGA (COLOBUS CAUDATUS, Thos.)
