Africa Transplanted

Opened at Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History last week was an exhibit unique among the world's museums. It was as if groups of animals, feeding, drinking, hunting, traveling or resting in Africa, had been immobilized by some mighty power and transported in their natural surroundings across the Atlantic to the Akeley Memorial Hall of African Mammals. Passing through the new Roosevelt Memorial visitors entered a vast room of black and grey marble, dimly illuminated from overhead by a light like dusk in the jungle. Around the sides of the hall were 15 reconstructions of animal life. On these shone a light like hot sunshine.

In the damp uplands of the Belgian Congo a glowering male gorilla beats his breast, while the female leans placidly against a tree, watching her baby eat wild celery. At a waterhole a mother giraffe with widespread forelegs is bending down to drink. Beside her are the male, keeping watch, and the calf. Nearby a young Grevy's zebra is suckling its mother. In the background baboons are scrambling over a steep cliff. On the plains of Tanganyika a group of mottled, sinister-looking wild dogs are intently watching a herd of zebra, ready to give chase and cut down a straggler. There is a group of five lions, including a superb black-maned male. Four giant sable antelopes are resting in a copse of acacia trees. A pair of Bongo antelopes are pushing into a bamboo jungle, disturbing a forest hog which heaves up from its bed among ferns and orchids.

In the centre of the hall, looming up in the dim light, is a group of eight big-eared elephants. They have no setting, give an overpowering impression of tons of monstrous life on the move. One enormous bull raises his trunk horizontally as a danger signal. The bull at the rear wheels around to make sure no enemy is following. Four of these beasts were shot by the museum's President Frederick Trubee Davison (TIME, Aug. 14; Sept. n, 1933). The other four were bagged by the late Carl Akeley.

Carl Akeley was a fervent student of animals, a man of dreams and obsessions, a lover of Africa, a skilled and inventive craftsman. At 15 he quit work on his father's farm, sent out cards reading, "Artistic taxidermy in all its branches." He thought stuffed animals were ridiculous, inaugurated the practice of making a sculptured model, faithful in every muscle, curve and hollow, stretching the skin over it. He made his first trip to Africa in 1896. He saw then that little of the real Africa could be conveyed by stiff specimens without backgrounds, or by frayed and disconsolate animals in a zoo, and conceived the idea which came to fruition last week when the hall bearing his name was opened.

Carl Akeley was never afraid to get close to his animals. Once he was clawed by a leopard. On another occasion, while studying a herd of elephants, he was suddenly charged by a bull. His gun jammed. Akeley seized the tusks of the oncoming beast, swung himself between them so that they drove into the ground without touching him. With its trunk the elephant smashed the explorer's nose, laid open his cheek, broke several ribs which punctured his lungs, then was distracted by the native boys and gave chase. During a three-month convalescence in a hospital, Akeley planned all the details of his African hall.

For 15 years it was almost never out of his mind or off his tongue. The American Museum agreed to provide space if the exhibits were forthcoming. In 1925, hear ing that George Eastman was going to Africa to hunt, the naturalist went to the rich Kodakman and said: "Mr. Eastman, I've got to have $1,000,000." Eastman offered to pay all the expenses of an expedition, to give $100,000 besides for transportation and reconstruction of material. Carl Akeley's dream was beginning to come true. Next year he died of fever in Africa, was buried in the high gorilla country which he loved. With such a good start, however, the museum was eager to go ahead with the project. Money was forthcoming from other wealthy people, most of whom demanded only that they have the fun of shooting the animals. Three hundred thousand dollars was provided for six expeditions. Painters went along to sketch the settings in color, and photographers to snap the animals in all their natural poses. Tons of rock, earth, sand, grass, tree trunks and branches were shipped to the museum, where they were treated with a preservative and the African settings reproduced piece by piece. Artificial berries, leaves and flowers were made of paper, wax, cloth, celluloid. In the gorilla group there are 75,000 artificial leaves and berries, some 20,000 fragments of genuine African flora. Museum officials were confident last week that no visitor could distinguish the imitation from the real.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.