African Adventure Stories (1914)

African Adventure Stories (1914)

J. (John) Alden Loring (1871 – 1947) was a mammologist and field naturalist who served with the Bureau of Biological Survey, United States Department of Agriculture, the Bronx Zoological Park, the Smithsonian Institution and numerous expeditions collecting specimens in North America, Europe and Africa. A voluminous and careful traveling collector, Loring was recognized early in his career for 900 specimens collected, prepared and sent to the United States National Museum over a three-month period during an 1898 expedition through Scandinavia and northwestern Europe. <br /><br />Loring's work and professional relationships spanned several continents focusing on collecting and documenting species of mammals. He served on the Smithsonian-Roosevelt African Expedition (1909–1910) as the Smithsonian specialist designated to preserve small mammals collected during the year-long expedition.<br /><br />As Theodore Roosevelt states:<br /> "THE author of this little volume, Mr. J. Alden Loring, is one of the three field naturalists who accompanied me during the eleven months that I spent in Africa, at the head of a scientific expedition sent out by the Smithsonian Institution. In the following pages Mr. Loring has chronicled many of the experiences that befell the expedition and its members, while some of the chapters are devoted to the experiences of trustworthy travellers and big-game hunters whom we met. What he describes as fact may unhesitatingly be accepted as such; and in the preface he clearly differentiates between the experiences in which he records fact, and those in which he tells stories merely founded on fact."<br /><br />I. A NARROW ESCAPE FROM AFRICAN BLACKS <br />II. LIONS <br />III FIGHTING AN AFRICAN GRASS-FIRE <br />IV MY FIRST LION <br />V THE WATS OF THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT <br />VI CHASED BY AN OSTRICH <br />VII MAULED BY AN ELEPHANT <br />VIII "JACKING" ANIMALS <br />IX A FATAL ENCOUNTER WITH LIONS <br />X CROCODILES <br />XI A BATTLE WITH A TORRENT <br />XII HIPPOS <br />XIII INTERESTING AFRICAN REPTILES <br />XIV A FIGHT WITH HIPPOS <br />XV WILD ANIMALS THAT I HAVE "et" <br />XVI A RACE WITH A RHINO<br />XVII IMPRISONED BY A COBRA<br />XVIII TREED BY AN ELEPHANT<br />XIX SNOW-BLIND ON MOUNT KENIA<br />XX CAPTURED BY AFRICAN SAVAGES<br />XXI CORNERED BY BABOONS<br />XXII A FIGHT WITH FIVE LIONS <br /><br />This book originally published by C. Scribner's Sons in 1914 has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional defect from the original publication or from the reformatting.