Be it ever so humble, there is no place like a, corner of the earth never before visited by white men. So think ethnologists, natural historians, cartographers, photographers, hunters and peepers and priers and pushers, who year in and year out spend money and lives on arduous expeditions. Some expeditions and their results of late months:*
Strange Fish. William Beebe, one of those fortunate men who seem to be doing exactly what their spirits desire, returned to Manhattan last week from a four-month fishing and observing expedition on the coral reefs of Haiti. In the scientific-romantic vein which characterizes his writings, he excited newsgatherers with stories of prowling on the ocean floor under 60 feet of water, clad in an ordinary bathing suit and diver's helmet equipped with air-and-telephone tube.† He dictated piscatorial descriptions to an assistant in a schooner above. Occasionally he scribbled fleeting impressions on a zinc plate with a lead pencil.
Prowler Beebe captured many a specimen at night, aided by a 2,000-candlepower electric lamp, which attracted ocean-dwellers within netting range. Some fish, however, are repelled by fight. For these, dynamite was brought into play. Landlocked pools were poisoned to obtain their denizens. Some species, friendly but coy, Mr. Beebe captured by shooting tiny harpoons into them from a Daisy air rifle.
A startling specimen was a transparent bell-shaped jellyfish, about a foot in diameter, which propels itself by opening and closing like an umbrella. This creature's interior is a dining room, playground and protectorate for as many as 300 little silvery fish. Unharmed by the host's poisonous tenacles and living on its killings, the parasite's swim in and out of its mouth at will.
Mr. Beebe, submarine poet, also captured the demoiselle, a dainty fishlet which gradually changes its afternoon dress of bright yellow — and blue to an evening dress of charcoal grey.
The Beebe expeditions are sent out by the New York Zoological Society. A party of ten went this time, traveling under sail, living in deck tents, trying to see how cheaply a four-month expedition can be run with comfort and valid results.
Elephants, Lions. Having been captured by savages at Mallicolo in the New Hebrides and rescued by a British warship, having made friends with elephants and lions in Eastern and Central Africa, Mr. & Mrs. Martin Johnson arrived in Manhattan a fortnight ago with 200,000 feet of film and 7,000 still pictures for the American Museum of Natural History. Headquarters for their three-and-a-half-year's animal observations were on the shores of a lake on the Abyssinian border, which they named Lake Paradise.
Their game came to them. Elephants visited their purposely planted sweet-potato patch so regularly that the Johnsons could recognize individuals, give them names, know them when they saw them many miles from home.
Mr. Johnson did the photographing. His wife, an expert shot, stood by with high-powered rifle. On one occasion, a cow elephant became distrustful of Mr. Johnson's maneuvers, charged him. Pretty Mrs. Johnson stopped the irate female with a bullet squarely between the eyes—only a few feet from the camera.