Abstract
THOUGH this monograph is replete with exact, and in many cases novel, information regarding the outward aspect and bones of the okapi, it will certainly strike the general reader, as well as the zoologist, as being an incomplete treatment of the subject. This may not be the fault of its principal author, Sir E. Ray Lankester, and is certainly not that of the keeper of the Natural History Museum, Dr. Sidney F. Harmer, but is apparently due to the financial control disliking the expense of publishing the volume of text, which should have accompanied the mere illustrations included in the volume under review. The reason given is that as Jules Fraipont has already published a monograph of the Okapi for the State Museum of Tervueren, Brussels—an admirable piece of work, it is generally admitted to be—the publication of the text of Sir E. Ray Lankester's studies and deductions would be superfluous. It is difficult to agree with the propriety of such a decision, and it is to be hoped that before long the text which should accompany these illustrations will also be printed and published, especially as in the interval of time which must elapse, further accurate information regarding this interesting beast may have come to hand. (The present writer has just been advised by Dr. Bumpus, of the Natural History Museum at New York, that a collector sent out by that museum has succeeded in capturing alive a male, female, and calf of the okapi, and these living forms of the animal are now being conveyed across the Congo basin for shipment to New York.) M. Fraipont's work, moreover, complete as it was for the date of its publication in 1908, is not nearly so accessible to ordinary students of zoology as the British Museum publications.
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"A Monograph of the Okapi". By Sir E. Ray Lankester . K.C.B., F.R.S., assisted by Dr. W. G. Ridewood . Pp. viii + 48 plates. (London: British Museum (Natural History) printed by Order of the Trustees, Longmans and Co., B. Quaritch, Dulau and Co., Ltd., 1910.) Price 25s.
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JOHNSTON, H. A Monograph of the Okapi 1 . Nature 85, 209–211 (1910). https://doi.org/10.1038/085209a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/085209a0