88 AFRICAN NATURE NOTES chap. 



herbivorous animals, and would then have died in 

 large numbers themselves, till in the end there 

 would have been few animals of any kind left. 

 But such catastrophes never occur. Wherever, 

 before the advent of the white man, game was very 

 plentiful in Africa, lions and all other carnivorous 

 animals were also numerous, but the meat - eaters 

 never increased to such an extent as to reduce the 

 numbers of the grass-eaters on which they preyed. 

 Let us take the Pungwe district in South - East 

 Africa for example. In 1891 I found the country 

 both east and west of the Pungwe river teeming 

 with game, particularly buffaloes and zebras, the 

 favourite food of the lion. Up to that time no 

 Europeans had ever hunted or in any way disturbed 

 the wild beasts in that country, and the few scattered 

 natives living there were timid and ill armed, and 

 certainly never killed or interfered with lions, which 

 animals therefore were absolutely without enemies. 

 As this state of things must have endured for cen- 

 turies, or more probably for untold thousands, of 

 years, why had not the lions and other carnivorous 

 animals, living as they had been doing in such a 

 well -stocked preserve, increased up to the limit 

 of their food -supply ? They certainly had not 

 done so up to 1891, the year the white man first 

 entered the country, and at once of course changed 

 all the natural conditions. Many lions certainly 

 seem to die in early cubhood, and this may be a 

 provision of nature to check their inordinate in- 

 crease ; but that neither they nor any other species 

 of carnivorous animal in Africa ever become so 

 numerous, under the most favourable conditions, 

 as to seriously diminish the numbers of the animals 

 on which they prey is a well-ascertained fact. 



Lionesses, I believe, only give birth to cubs at 

 long intervals, for although I have often seen young 

 lions and lionesses with their mothers which must 



