NATURAL HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA 



development of the land and the prosperity of the 

 farmers. A scarcity of birds means a rapid increase 

 in destructive insects, and a corresponding decrease 

 in the prosperity of the individual, the community, 

 and the State. 



It would be well for the country if the sportsman 

 confined himself mainly to shooting four-footed game, 

 such as antelopes and hares. These animals are of no 

 economic value. Their mission in life is to act as a 

 check on vegetation, but their services in this respect 

 are no longer required. We need the vegetation for 

 our domestic animals. Moreover, the buck and the 

 hare are very destructive to crops. The farmer would 

 be well advised to ban the shooting of all game birds 

 on his lands. 



It might be that under protection they would 

 increase too largely and take to eating his corn owing 

 to the dearth of insects, wild bulbs, weed and grass 

 seeds. Should this occur he can easily reduce their 

 numbers to normal with his gun, and at the same 

 time give them a lesson not to encroach too freely 

 on his lands during the sowing time and when the 

 corn is ripening. Even if rigorously protected by 

 man, the game birds are not likely to increase unduly. 

 They are preyed upon by various carnivorous animals 

 and birds of prey. Rats eat their eggs and young, 

 wire-worms attack their vitals and destroy them, and 

 diseases peculiar to their kind ever and anon reduce 

 their numbers. I have, in my time, been as keen a 

 hunter and sportsman as anyone, but after discovering 

 by personal investigation that game birds were of 



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