One of Mr. Knight's latest paintings of this great feline, taken from life. Combining his knowledge of the living species with scientific knowledge of the sabre-tooth tiger he has re-created the extinct species in a painting for the American Museum of Natural History. making an attack. Though it is impossible to put whiskers on a clay model, the artist points out that on a tiger attacking an enemy the whiskers would be thrust forward in anger but on a tiger seizing prey the whiskers would be drawn back at an angle. Explaining his point upon the psychology of a tiger, Mr. Knight cites the leopard in Cabanel's famous painting of Cleopatra. The animal is gazing out of one side of the picture, apparently oblivious to the execution of the death sentence on a slave in the background of the picture. "In reality the leopard would have his attention fixed upon this action," said Mr. Knight. "The animal would be alert, watching every movement. It would not be gazing out of the picture at nothing Charles R. Knight A SHEIK OF THE DESERT? No: merely a sketch made on New York's in particular. The painter obviously used the leopard merely as a little color or stage setting, and undoubtedly the beast was copied from a London zoo photograph, of which I have a print. "The point I want to make there is, that many artists use the animal merely as a decoration and not because every beautiful specimen is worthy of portrayal because of its own beauty." Portraying animals because of their own beauty is AN EXAMPLE OF THE RESTORATION OF PREHISTORIC ANIMALS The big carnivore, oxyæna, is feeding upon one of the ancestors of the modern horse. The restoration of the animals is based upon bones found by paleontologists, and even the plants are true to the period. Because his large panels of prehistoric animals and men have been viewed by thousands of visitors at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and widely copied in publications and books, the common impression has been that this versatile artist specializes on the restorations of prehistoric life only. "I began by painting living animals,' says Mr. Knight, "or I would never have been able to restore the prehistoric types. The living tiger evolved from the prehistoric tiger, and the living elephant evolved from types allied with the mammoth and the mastodon. By combining knowledge of the living tiger with the scientific knowledge gathered by the his father was secretary to the late J. Pierpont Morgan. First he drew pictures of his dog and, incidentally, in later life he painted the famous Morgan collies one of his best pictures of living animals. He journeyed to the old zoo in Central Park in New York City, where he drew pictures of the lions and tigers, very creditable pictures for a boy of thirteen years, as their dim outlines in an old drawing book still show. He did not go to college. He thought he would like to be an architectural designer and took a course in that work. Finally he took a place with a New York firm noted for its stained glass windows and architectural ornaments, but he worked so hard at his drawing and studies Courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History A WOOLLY MAMMOTH OF PREHISTORIC TIMES From a picture made by Mr. Knight for the American Museum of Natural History. He says that in recreating these extinct beasts he is merely looking backward on evolution, and to be able to restore this animal he had to know the modern species, the elephant. ing, and he sold one of his first drawings to S. S. McClure, who was just then starting McClure's Magazine. A few years later he started drawing his prehistoric animals, some as magazine illustrations and others for the American Museum of Natural History. Some of the walls of the American Museum of Natural History are literally covered with these small paintings and drawings of prehistoric animals, varying from the small drawings of thirty years ago to the new murals fifty feet long and ten feet high. Some of the new dinosaur and other paintings in the new halls of the Museum. will be even larger. the stages of polishing and revising the sketches, and only when the final sketches. are made is work started on the big panel. By that time four fifths of the work has been done. There remains only the transfer of the smaller drawing to the vast panel. If that is made in two or more pieces the artist has the vexatious problem of blending the colors and in making the parts fit. Several of these pictures have been reproduced in the WORLD'S WORK in other issues. His study of the prehistoric animals. led him to study prehistoric man, and one of his artistic works is the restoration of the Neanderthal man in conformance Months are required for the painting with the measurement of the bones dis 504 A Permanent Record of Prehistoric Animals covered by the scientists. Telling of this work, he points out the scientific fact that every man, every canine of the smallest size, and the tallest giraffe have various common principles of body construction. For instance, giraffe, man, and dog have the same number of vertebræ in the neck -seven. It is likely that Mr. Knight will be considered by future generations as one of the outstanding artists of our time. He has more square feet of canvas and a larger number of pictures in the American Museum of Natural History than any other artist has in any other museum in the world, and it is not probable that they will be removed unless scientists suddenly discover some vast store of new knowledge that would alter the entire present-day conception of the animals of past ages. In addition, he has done much work for the United States Government and the Carnegie Institution. At fifty, he has still many more years of work ahead of him. One of the most remarkable facts about him is that he has done all this work with eyes not particularly good. In fact, one eye was badly injured while he was a child and it is not of much use to him in his work as an artist. T Charles R. Knight A FLORIDA ALLIGATOR Walter S. Gifford, Executive A Young Man Who Is Quiet and Non-Explosive RIVIAL incidents are frequently more revealing of the true elements of character or personality than studied, deliberate confessions. Therefore, one insignificant incident may tell more of the real character and personality of Walter S. Gifford than the reams written about him since he became President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company at the early age of forty. On a torrid summer day during a hot spell that had frayed the nerves of a city's millions the telephone in Mr. Gifford's not-too-cool office rang sharply—not in that steady drone that does not alarm, but in that nervous, jerky fashion which spells trouble. (This being a sketch of a telephone man those fine points can be noted): "Hello, Mr.- -?" queried a not-toopleasant voice, slurring the name of the man he sought. "Well, yes," replied Mr. Gifford, pleasantly but dubiously. The speaker then launched into his conversation about business which was not handled in the office of the executive vice-president of the world's largest public utility, but in the office of another official of similar name. Patiently the executive listened until a convenient break in the conversation arrived, and then he "flashed" the operator and helped his perturbed caller to find the man he wanted. Pleasantly and quietly accomplished! Again in a few minutes the bell rang insistently. The same not-too-pleasant voice of the not-too-cool caller, finished with his first piece of business, was back with another, and making the same mistake in names. Then a steady, unbreakable drone of details on business that could not have been interesting to the executive vice |