"The Colonel X. whom I wrote to you about is, I am quite sure, what we should term a fake, although I also have no doubt that he has actually done a good deal of big game hunting; but I am certain that, together with his real experiences, he puts in some that are all nonsense. Did you ever read the writings of a man named Leveson, who called himself 'the Old Shikari'? He was undoubtedly a great hunter; yet when he wrote about American big game, I know that he stretched the long bow, and I am very sure he did the same about African big game. He everywhere encountered precisely those adventures which boys' books teach us to expect. Thus as soon as he got to Africa, he witnessed a vicious encounter between black rhinoceroses and elephants, which would have done credit to Mayne Reid; exactly as Colonel X. relates the story of a fearful prize-fight, in which a captive English Major slays a gorilla, against which he is pitted by a cannibal king--dates, names and places being left vacant. "What do you know of that South African hunter and writer named Drummond? He wrote very interestingly, and gave most vivid descriptions of hunting-camps, of the African scenery, and of adventures with Hons and buffaloes; but his remarks about rhinoceroses made me think he was not always an exact observer, especially after I had read what you said. "By the way, did I ever mention to you that Willie Chanler's party was continually charged by black rhinoceroses, and his companion, an Austrian named Von Hoehnel, who stayed with me once, was badly mauled by one." Like most schoolboys with a taste for natural history and an adventurous disposition Selous had, as we have seen, been an industrious bird-nester. In his youth he had commenced to make a collection of European birds' eggs, and this taste, usually abandoned by most boys in after-life, was in him only dormant. When he set out to do anything he generally carried it through to the end; and so when opportunity came again, as it did after his wanderings in South Africa were finished, he seized it with avidity. He was much too good a naturalist to collect eggs wholesale, as some collectors unfortunately do, but contented himself with one or two clutches taken by himself. His contention was, I think, a correct one, that if only one clutch of eggs of a bird is taken, the same bird either sits again and lays a fresh set of eggs or makes a new nest. So little or no harm is done. Being a member of the British Ornithologists' Union he knew all the regular egg-collectors, and soon obtained the best information where various species were to be found. Each year as April came round he packed his bag and, occasionally accompanied by some local enthusiast, he went to all the best resorts of rare birds in England, Scotland, the Orkneys, Asia Minor, Spain, Hungary, Holland, and Iceland.