People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 January 1897 — For Field Museum Collection. [ARTICLE]

For Field Museum Collection.

The anthropological collection brought from Africa for the Field Columbian museum has been unpacked and the specimens are now being prepared for exhibition by Taxidermist C. E. Akeley. Many of the specimens are tfnique and all are said to be the best of their kind. Among the rare specimens are the koodoo antelope, Summering’s gazelle, Clarke’s gazelle or dibatag, dikdik oryx. The dikdik is a wee antelope not bigger than a small rabbit. It measures about eighteen inches from its little jet black nose to the tip of its abbreviated tail and stands about thirteen inches high. The dibatag is not a large antelope, but its slender legs carry its 100

pounds of body twenty-seven feet on an average at every stride. The collection altogether is considered by naturalists to be the finest ever brought from Africa and completely representative of Beroera district, where the party operated. Mr. Akeley was engaged in putting the finishing touches to a plaster death mask of a woozaree yesterday afternoon. He paused in his work for a moment to fill a big briar pipe and impart information, “These casts enable me to mount an animal so as to preserve its characteristics,”he said. “I always use them. We got our guns in London. We only used one kind—the Mannlicher. That gun will kill anything from a rabbit to an elephant with neatness and dispatch. *

“Yes, this was my first visit to Africa, but if I live will not be my last. I had just begun to get interested when we returned. No, we did not do much with lions; they are poor in' color and meek in spirit where we were We were just on the edge of a rhinoceros country, but we didn’t get any of them. “It is a hard country, the Somali land and rather inaccessible for the reason that,so much of it is preserved by the British for the use of the officers at Aden. They may hunt over it, but no one else may. The Somali are rather a good-leoking lot of people. Some of them have features of almost Grecian regularity. “The anthropological collection includes all of the Somali weapons as well as riding accoutrements and household utensils. The Nomads hkve no pottery, but are expert weavers, and make baskets of such fine text ure that they hold water. Their jewelry is mostly of silver with simple barbaric designs.