WITH A "FOREWORD" BY
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT
AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY
E. CALDWELL
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1908
TO
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED NOT ONLY BECAUSE IT WAS ENTIRELY OWING TO HIS INSPIRATION AND KINDLY ENCOURAGEMENT THAT IT WAS EVER WRITTEN BUT ALSO BECAUSE BOTH IN HIS PRIVATE AND PUBLIC LIFE HE HAS ALWAYS WON THE SINCERE ADMIRATION AND ESTEEM
OF
THE AUTHOR
PREFACE
The chapters comprised in the present volume were written at various times during the last ten years. Some of them have already appeared in print in the pages of the Field, Land and Water, and other papers, but the majority have remained in manuscript until now. The greatest part of the matter in the chapters on the "Lion" was written some years ago, and was intended to be the commencement of a book dealing entirely with the life-history of South African mammals. When, however, I was asked by Mr. Rowland Ward to contribute to a book he was about to publish on the Great and Small Game of Africa, all the articles in which would be written by men who had personally studied the habits of the animals they described, I gave up the idea of myself writing a less comprehensive work on similar lines, and became one of the chief contributors to Mr. Ward's large and valuable publication.