Future workers in this field will find that my labours have served to some extent to clear the ground for them, and we may look forward to many interesting achievements. There can be no doubt that the explorer who provides himself with the necessary photographic equipment will find ample scope for his activities.
My own process was simple enough. I stretched lines of string round the heifer or goat which was to serve as a bait, and the lions, hyenas, etc., falling on their prey pulled these strings, which worked the flashlight—the animals thus taking their own photographs. Some of these pictures record new facts in natural history. In my first book, for instance, there is a picture of a lioness making off with her tail raised high in the air in a way no artist would have thought of depicting, and no naturalist have believed to be characteristic.
C. G. Schillings, phot.
MORE ANTELOPES. 1. BLACK-HOOFED ANTELOPE (ÆPYCEROS SUARA, Mtsch.), BUCK. 2. MOUNTAIN REEDBUCK (CERVICAPRA CHANLERI, Rothsch.). 3. GRANT’S GAZELLE (GAZELLA GRANTI, Brooke), DOE. 4. ORYX ANTELOPE (ORYX CALLOTIS, Thos.), BUCK.
In the course of my labours I had to overcome every description of obstacle, and had constantly to be making new experiments. By the time I had got things right I had so small a stock of materials left at my disposal that I ought to congratulate myself upon my subsequent success. The number of good pictures I secured was far less than I had originally hoped for, but on the other hand it far surpassed what, in those moods of pessimism which followed upon my many failures, I had begun to think I should have to be contented with.
Among my successful efforts I count those which record the fashion in which the lion falls upon his prey, first prowling round it; and those which represent rhinoceroses and hippopotami, leopards and hyenas and jackals, antelopes and zebras making their way down to the waterside to drink; those also which show the way in which hyenas and jackals carry off their spoils, and the relations that exist between them. But a point of peculiar interest that my photographs bring out is the way in which the eyes of beasts of prey shine out in the darkness of night. I have never been able to get any precise scientific explanation of this phenomenon. I have often seen it for myself in the wilderness. Professor Yngve Sjöstedt, a Swedish naturalist, who has travelled in the Kilimanjaro region, tells us that he once saw, quite near his camp, the eyes of at least ten lions shining out from the darkness exactly like lights. I find the following passage, too, in an old book, printed at Nuremberg in 1719: “Travellers tell us (and I myself have seen it) that you can follow the movements of lions in the dark owing to the way in which their glowing eyes shine out like twin lights.”
Even with a small hand-camera it is possible to secure pictures worth having, such as the studies of heads reproduced on the accompanying pages. These must always have a certain value, as they depict for the most part species of animals which have never yet been secured for zoological gardens.
I repeat that there is an immense harvest awaiting the man who is prepared to work thoroughly in this field. Why, for instance, should he not succeed in getting a picture by night of an entire troop of lions? My photographs show how a mating lion and lioness fall on their victim—from different sides; and how three lionesses may be seen quenching their thirst at midnight, all together. With good luck some one may manage to photograph a troop of a dozen or twenty lions hunting their prey—that would be a fine achievement. Or he might secure a wonderful group of bull-elephants on their way down to a drinking-place. The possibilities are immense.