TRAFFIC TERRORS IN AMERICA

Evening Star, Issue 20056, 22 December 1928, Page 3

TRAFFIC TERRORS IN AMERICA

“ WORSE THAN JUNGLE DANGERS " [From Our Own Correspondent.] SAN FRANCISCO, November 14, Arthur Vernay, big game hunter lor the American Museum of Natural History, has left the “dangers” of New York for the jungles of India and Africa to take on lions and tigers. Air Vernay, who is making his fifth expedition for the museum, is nervous of New York traffic, and much prefers tho charge of a rhinoceros to the sinuous and unheralded approach of a New York taxicab. “ Please say emphatically that I haven’t myself ever encountered what I would call danger in hunting in wild country, and very litle discomfort,” he said just before leaving New York. “ I have just crossed Fifth Avenue at Fifty-fourth street, and I felt infinitely more concerned for my safety than I have over felt in tho jungle.” His hunting partner for tho expedition will bo Colonel J. C. Faunthorpe, Aido-do-caiup to King George, and the best shot in England. Colonel Faunthorpe. has already started for India. The purpose of the expedition will be to bring back certain specimens needed to complete the museum’s collection of wild animals of the plains of India. It has required three years, ho said, to obtain the permission of local rulers to invade their particular private jungles. Fifteen trained hunting elephants and about sixty men will accompany tho expedition, which will force its way through a thickly-forested and swampy country. As for snakes that creep under "tents to coil themselves around invaders, Mr Vernay believes that danger to be offset by the excellence of the jungle air, which is unfouled by gaSoiene, Among the specimens he hopes to complete with be the three different species of Asian rhinoceros—the Great Indian (with one horn), the Gumatran (with two horns), and tho Javan (with one horn). In South Burma last year the hunters found that the one-horned rhinoceros had been exterminated.

Outwitting the rhinoceros, Mr Vernay believes, is far easier than escaping taxi drivers. One waits for the rhinoceros to go clown to his mud at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, creeps up on the wallow, and blazes away. Mr Vernay has bagged many a rhinoceros, but eo far ha* not bagged a taxi driver.