CH. VIII EXTINCTION OF GREAT GAME 131 



small roan antelope in which the black face mark- 

 ings and conspicuous white tufts under the eyes 

 were wanting ; whilst the true quagga was nothing 

 but the dullest coloured and most southerly form of 

 Burchell's zebra. Deplorable, therefore, as is the 

 loss of these two animals, it is not quite so distress- 

 ing as it would be had they been the sole repre- 

 sentatives of the genera to which they belonged, 

 and personally I look upon the disappearance of the 

 Cape buffalo and the black and white rhinoceros 

 from almost every part of Southern Africa, over 

 which these animals once wandered so plentifully, 

 with far greater regret ; for when these highly 

 specialised and most interesting creatures have 

 completely disappeared from the face of the South 

 African veld, there will be no living species of 

 animal left alive in that country which resembles 

 them in the remotest degree. 



Of course, neither the Cape buffalo nor either of 

 the two species of rhinoceroses indigenous to Africa 

 are yet absolutely extinct in the country to the 

 south of the Zambesi river ; but of the great white 

 or square- mouthed, grass-eating rhinoceroses, the 

 largest of all terrestrial mammals after the elephant, 

 none are left alive to-day with the exception of some 

 half-dozen which still survive in Zululand, and a 

 very few which are believed to exist in the neigh- 

 bourhood of the Angwa river, in Southern Rhodesia. 

 A few of the black or prehensile-lipped species are, 

 I should think, still to be found here and there 

 throughout the great stretch of uninhabited country 

 which lies between the high plateaus of Southern 

 Rhodesia and the Zambesi river, but, like their 

 congener the white rhinoceros, they are now entirely 

 extinct throughout all but an infinitesimal proportion 

 of the vast territories over which they ranged so 

 plentifully only half a century ago. 



By the enforcement of game laws, and the estab- 



