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I have written this Foreword, not after reading the manuscript of the volume thoroughly, but after a quarter of a century acquaintance with the experiences, thoughts, and ideals of the author himself. This is the daybook, the diary, the narrative, the incident, and the adventure of an African sculptor and an African biographer, whose observations we hope may be preserved in imperishable form, so that when the animal life of Africa has vanished, future generations may realize in some degree the beauty and grandeur which the world has lost.

Sculptor and Biographer of the vanishing wild life of Africa—I do not feel that I can adequately and truthfully characterize Carl E. Akeley better than in these words. I have always maintained that he was a sculptor, that sculpture was his real vocation, in which taxidermy was an incidental element. The sculptor is a biographer and an historian. Without sculpture we should know far less of the vanished greatness of Greece than we do. Through sculpture Carl E. Akeley is recording the vanishing greatness of the natural world of Africa. We palæontologists alone realize that in Africa the remnants of all the royal families of the Age of Mammals are making