Animals

SAFARI--Martin Johnson--Putnams ($5).

" 'Oh, I think it's mean of them!' [exclaimed Mrs. Johnson rushing indoors to her husband.]

" 'Who?' I snapped, wondering angrily if the natives had been misbehaving.

" 'Those elephants. They've been at my vegetable garden again!' "

The garden in question was located in the thick of African jungles, overlooking a beautiful lake, three weeks by motor from the nearest town, the capital of Kenya. Here dwelt for nearly four years Hunter-Photographer Martin Johnson & wife, a pet monkey, a Boer mechanic, a native maid for Mrs. Johnson, nearly 200 native servants and an incredible number of supplies necessary for the making of good pictures, moving and still. Here meandered, day and night, elephants, "the good natured (until roused) bourgeois of the forest," the always bad-humored rhinos, the stupid hippopotami, dainty Abyssinian bushbucks and their antelope and gazelle cousins, gossipy baboons, antbear and wart hogs, genets, and the carnivorous jackals, hyenas, leopards, lions, reptiles, nightingales, storks, flamingoes, etc.

But the greatest variety of beasts are on the open plains where the enemy-beasts cannot sneak up so easily unnoticed. From a blind on the edge of a water hole, the Johnsons watched, photographed. Herds of oryx, the double-horned unicorn, wilde-beeste, kongari, eland, impalla, buffalo, zebra, came in turns to drink. Also the rare okapi. They respect and stand aside for the conceited and preening ostrich of the deadly kick. Zebra snap and fight among themselves continuously. Giraffes, "the creatures God forgot," wander about nervously nibbling at the trees too timid even to drink. Defenseless against his fatal leap, they are the favorite food of Simba, the lion.

One day the late Carl Akeley, sculptor, taxidermist, proved to the Johnsons that lions that have never been hunted by man will not attack him. He showed them a valley inhabited by a dozen or more such lions, enormous cats, playing and sleeping. THEY WENT IN AMONG THE LIONS, spent two whole days photographing them. (The movies are now being shown on Broadway). Had only one lion attacked them, they could not have escaped death in the general battle which would have ensued. The native porters, watching from a nearby hill became convinced that their masters had a godlike, supernatural power. All this is told perhaps better in Safari, the Johnsons' book, than in Simba, the Johnsons' cinema, currently showing.