Further, the men in such expeditions are not hunters even. They are
destroyers who destroy while keeping themselves in safety. They have
their beaters. Their paid natives. Humbug! That's the only word to
describe that kind of thing. Staged effects they have. Then they come
back here to pose as heroes before a crowd of gaping city clerks."
I mentioned the remarkable results obtained by the Peary and Roosevelt
expeditions and pointed to the fact that the specimens brought back and
properly set up by efficient taxidermists, did, in fact, give the common
people some notion of the wonders of animal life.
"Nothing of the kind," he said. "Look at that boa-constrictor you have
out there. It is stuffed and in a glass case. Don't you know that in its
natural surroundings you yourself would come mighty near stepping on one
without seeing it? You would. If you had that thing set up as it should
be, these museum visitors of yours would pass the case believing it was
a mere collection of foliage. They wouldn't see the snake itself. See
what I mean? Set up as they are in real life they'd come near being
invisible."
The man walked up and down the study floor for half a minute or so, then
paused at the desk and said:
"Don't let us get to entertaining one another though.
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