NATURAL HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA 



our lands in countless swarms. These locusts are 

 dainty food for the mungooses, and while they are 

 plentiful they live almost exclusively on them. 

 Mungooses which I kept in captivity in Natal 

 preferred locusts to any other form of diet. Swarms 

 of injurious caterpillars, termites, and other crea- 

 tures which are a pest to man are swept out of 

 existence by the mungoose. Thus does the active 

 and alert mungoose render the most valuable of 

 services to the human race, and it therefore be- 

 hoves us to exercise the greatest of discretion in 

 the destruction of this animal friend, which may 

 at times forfeit its right to live by reason of its 

 occasional depredations in the poultry yard. When 

 the mungoose becomes a poultry thief then by all 

 means destroy it ; but when it is met with out in 

 its native habitat away from the abode of man, 

 then leave it alone, else the balance of Nature may 

 be upset, and retribution may fall upon the de- 

 stroyer. The sportsman farmer who keeps no 

 small stock such as poultry, but who desires to 

 encourage the breeding of game birds on his estate, 

 is quite justified in destroying the mungooses on 

 his land, but he has no moral right to publicly 

 proclaim this little animal to be a pest and a nuisance 

 to man generally. 



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