Still with all our work we are only well started on the gorilla group. The background—and it is a beautiful scene—must be painted by as great an artist as we can get and he must go to Karisimbi to make his studies. And the preparators who make the accessories—the artificial leaves, trees, and grasses—they, too, must go to examine the spot and collect their data, for every leaf and every tree and every blade of grass must be a true and faithful copy of nature. Otherwise, the exhibit is a lie and it would be nothing short of a crime to place it in one of the leading educational institutions of the country.
But, someone will say, this is all in the future. What has already been accomplished? What definitely is the status of Roosevelt African Hall?
Well, I am mounting animals. The elephant group, the white rhinoceroses, and one of the okapi are completed and are now on exhibition. Work on the gorilla group is advancing rapidly. There are already collected and awaiting their turn to be mounted materials for a black rhino group and a lion group. I have estimated that it will require at least ten years and the expenditure of one million dollars to complete the work. And there is good reason to hope that the money needed will be provided. President Henry Fairfield Osborn in his Annual Report of the American Museum of Natural History for 1922 has called for a gift or a special endowment of one million dollars to finance and develop Roosevelt African Hall in addition to other funds now available, stressing this as the most pressing need of the Museum in the year 1923. The income from such a special endowment will enable us to complete the African Hall during the next decade and leave a million dollars of the new special endowment for the development of the new building to house the hall.
I am hopeful, too, that the Roosevelt Memorial Hall, out of which Roosevelt African Hall will open, is about to become a reality. The New York State Legislature will soon have before it a bill to appropriate two and one half million dollars for a memorial to New York's great citizen. Such a building is one of two plans for this memorial now under consideration by the State Roosevelt Memorial Commission and there is much reason to hope that it may be favourably received by the people of the state.
I ought not properly to be writing autobiographical matter. That is usually a sign that a man is through and the truth is that I am just ready to begin my work. So far I have been studying my profession. Now I am prepared to practise it on one great example and in so doing to train men to continue my work so that the museums of this country can portray whatever of animal life they desire in a way that will have the greatest attraction and instruction for the public, both lay and scientific. It is chiefly in the hope of furthering that great project which must be undertaken now—a project to put into permanent and artistic form a complete record of the fast-disappearing animal life of the last stronghold of the Age of Mammals—that I write these things. Enough has been said to indicate that this is not one man's task. It may not even be accomplished by several men in the span of one man's life. But the future will show concrete results, for the slowest and most laborious stages of preparation are now in the past. Years of experimentation have perfected taxidermy, years of observation in the field have made a true conception possible, the American Museum of Natural History has committed itself to the plan—in a word, I am about to realize my dream.