mounted elephants now in the American Museum of Natural History. Many others can be told in small bronzes. I want to tell these stories, and in the time I have on earth I could not record many elephant stories in taxidermy, for one group really done well takes years—but I can tell these stories in bronze.
After The Wounded Comrade had made a success, many of my friends came to my studio (where I did taxidermy) in the Museum and advised me to keep on making bronzes. "Here's your opportunity," they said. "You have a market. Fortune favours you. Don't neglect the fickle lady."
But I did not follow this advice and make many bronzes. It may have been because I was lazy or busy with other things, but I like to think that it was because I had decided not to make bronzes unless I had a real story to tell. I wanted to do justice if I could to my friend, the elephant. And, also, I wanted to do what I did well enough to prove that a taxidermist could be, as he ought to be, an artist.
So I progressed with sculpture very slowly. In the nine years since The Wounded Comrade was made I have made only six bronzes.
In my second piece I have pictured a scene that will always remain very vivid in my memory—a charging herd. I had been following a large herd of elephants, two hundred or more, in the Budongo Forest for two days. They had broken up into small bands and the particular band which I was following had got near the edge of the forest. Nevertheless, I was
