"Apparently your 'African Nature Notes' was 'hoodooed' by my introduction and the dedication to me; but I cannot help hoping that you will now publish a book giving your experiences in East Africa and up the White Nile. Without the handicap of my introduction, I think it would do well! Seriously, the trouble with your 'African Nature Notes' is that it is too good. The ideal hunting-book ought not to be a simple record of slaughter; it ought to be good from the literary standpoint and good from the standpoint of the outdoor naturalist as well as from the standpoint of the big game hunter. Stigand's books fulfil both the latter requirements, but he has not your power to write well and interestingly, and he has a rather morbid modesty or self-consciousness which makes him unable to tell simply and as a matter of course the really absorbingly interesting personal adventures with which he has met. Unfortunately, however, the average closet naturalist usually wants to read an utterly dry little book by some closet writer, and does not feel as if a book by a non-professional was worth reading--for instance, I was interested in London to find two or three of my scientific friends, who knew nothing whatever about protective coloration in the field, inclined to take a rather sniffy view of your absolutely sound and, in the real sense, absolutely scientific, statement of the case. On the other hand, the average man who reads hunting-books is too apt to care for nothing at all but the actual account of the hunting or of the travelling, because he himself knows no more about the game than the old Dutch and South African hunters whom you described used to know about the different 'species' of lion and black rhinoceros. Nevertheless I am sure that your 'African Nature Notes' will last permanently as one of the best books that any big game hunter and out-of-doors naturalist has ever written. Charles Sheldon was saying exactly this to me the other day. By the way, I hope he will soon write something about his experiences in Alaska. They are well worth writing about. I am much irritated because Shiras, some of whose pictures I once sent you, will not make any use of his extraordinary mass of notes and photographs of American wild game and the rarer creatures of the American forests and mountains.