In Brightest Africa

Synopsis

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 their last stand, that their backs are up against the pitiless wall of what we call civilization. Human rights are triumphing over animal rights, and it would be hard to determine which rights are really superior or most worthy to survive.

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