I have further tried to show by illustrations of another giraffe, and of a series of antelopes, down to the tiny dwarf antelope, how under the hand of the artist the animal world can be made to rise up again, as if waked anew to life.
All our larger museums ought to exhibit the most important and most prominent representatives of the animal kingdom modelled in attractive groups in their natural surroundings.
In America it has become the custom for private individuals to place at the disposal of the zoological institutions extensive collections and large sums of money. With this help they are able to produce artistic work, true to nature, works of art, the consideration of which gives the spectator an insight into the life and habits of the animal world of his native land as well as of foreign countries. Unfortunately this custom has hardly yet been introduced amongst us.
My native city of Frankfurt[23] can claim the honour of possessing, in the time-honoured Senckenberg Institute (now transferred to a new home), a museum founded by private effort and private interests, where one may see collections formed for exhibition, that may be pointed out as models of their kind.
The collector of such things can partake of no greater pleasure than he experiences when, making a tour of the museums of various places at home, he sees awakened to new life the wild creatures he formerly observed and laid low in far-off lands. So I could not deny myself the pleasure of adding to this book a number of pictures of animals and groups of animals which I secured in the wastes of Africa, and which are now set up in various museums. These are trophies that must allure every sportsman. It is of course not so easy a matter to secure them as it is to hack off without any trouble the antlers or horns of some wild animal that one has shot.
C. G. Schillings, phot.
DRYING ORNITHOLOGICAL SPECIMENS FOR MY COLLECTION.
C. G. Schillings, phot.