THE DECADENCE OF GREAT GAME 283 



leopards, cheetahs, elephants, oryxes, cynocephalous 

 apes, long-tailed monkeys, and many other beasts, 

 are all represented upon the monuments of his time. 

 It is a far cry from the days of Thothmes, yet the 

 love of the chase still remains deeply implanted in 

 the breast of mankind. This cacocthes venandi has 

 urged many and many an Englishman to the utter- 

 most parts of the earth, and has aided not a little in 

 the opening up of new countries. 



The Romans of later imperial times were, of 

 course, immense destroyers of feral life. The num- 

 bers of rare animals exhibited and slaughtered in the 

 arena, and brought to grace various triumphs must 

 have been prodigious. Yet the waste of the Romans, 

 and the butchers' bills of the barbaric kinoes of 

 ancient times were, after all, but small episodes in 

 the decline of the mammalian fauna. 



If the great game countries could have slumbered 

 on in barbarism there is no saying how long the 

 rarer fauna of the world might not have lasted. 

 Before the advent of the white man and the intro- 

 duction of firearms, the North American Indians, 

 with all their necessary hunting, had made little 

 impression upon the teeming herds of bison and the 

 other game of their country. 



In Africa, forty or fifty years ago, the country 

 north of the Orange River was black with game. 

 The various tribes of Becbuanas, the Matabele, the 



