The wonderful success of the film Chang, which laid its
scene in the• heart of a dense tropical jungle in the East, encourages the belief that the open park-like veldt of Africa will make it' clearly the star continent of screen adventure." That at all' events is the opinion- of 'Mt. Martin' JOhnsclui' who gives ample warrant for his judgment 'in the uniquely splendid illustrations (largely taken - by flashlight) of his Safari (Putnam, 21s.), which can boast as its most notable achievement the filming of fifteen full-grown lions in a bunch. The famous game-hunter, Gordon Cumming, records that he once fired forty shots into an elephant -before the poor beast succumbed ; Mr. Johnson would have given the animal forty feet of film instead. But hunting with the caniera has its -E dventurous thrills. While the author turned the handle, his plucky and pretty wife stood ready by with a rifle, and twice she dropped elephants at her husband's feet, and twice a charging lion and a rhino within ten yards of the camera. Mr. Johnson's account of the still marvellous wealth of animal life in East Africa is lively and graphic, but he is sometimes dangerously cocksure and inaccurate. He disbelieves, for instance, in the existence of man-eating lions. , A reference to the Spectator of Marsh 3rd, 1900, and to Colonel Patterson's Man-Eaters of Tsavp (which recounts the history of how lions held up for three .weeks the con- struction of the very railway on which Mr. Johnson travelled) will supply him with plenty of evidence to the contrary. Many of his statements, too, about the ostrich are quite inaccurate, and he once more gives currency. (though with a query) to the silly belief that the superfluous eggs often found lying round an ostrich nest afford food for the chicks. Such eggs, after seven weeks' exposure to cold by night and burning heat by day, are as explosive as a poison-gas shell and a deal more nasty. Crede experto. But the book is worth buying for its illustrations alone.
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