ZOOLOGY 219 



an excellent museum with sections devoted to natural history and 

 biology. In Northern Rhodesia there is a small museum at Living- 

 stone, which it is proposed to expand in the near future. 



Turning to West Africa, there is no single museum with fauna 

 collections, except in Achimota College at Accra, which has a few 

 zoological specimens in addition to the extensive herbarium men- 

 tioned in Chapter VI. Material is being accumulated, however, 

 at some of the Government laboratories. The Nigerian Field, pub- 

 lished quarterly since 1932, contains valuable articles by local 

 students. The Gold Coast has a similar journal and Sierra Leone 

 Notes and Records appears quarterly. 



The action taken by the British colonial territories with regard 

 to the protection of wild fauna since the London Convention of 

 1900 has been outlined by C. W. Hobley (1933), from whose ac- 

 count some of the following information is taken. 



Game Departments are operating in East Africa in Kenya, 

 Uganda, and Tanganyika. The Kenya department was the first 

 to be established, and is now under Captain A. T. A. Ritchie. It 

 includes, in addition, two officers on game preservation, a fish- 

 warden, and several officers on the control of game and vermin. 

 It has, however, been impossible for the existing staff, except to a 

 very limited degree, to make scientific studies of the wild fauna, 

 a task which should fall within the department's province. The post 

 of senior assistant game warden has been vacant for some time, 

 and Captain Ritchie is hoping to fill this, as soon as financial con- 

 ditions in the colony allow, with an officer with full scientific 

 qualifications, who would spend a part of his time on research 

 into the problems which the future of game in Kenya presents. 



The Uganda department, under Captain C. R. S. Pitman, is ably 

 conducted and has two European rangers and a considerable 

 African staff, among whose duties elephant control figures promi- 

 nently. In the warden's report for 1935 it is noted, for instance, 

 that 1,546 elephants were killed by the game department during 

 the year, out of a total elephant mortality estimated from all 

 sources at 2, 1 00. The damage done to native agriculture apparently 

 justifies such wholesale slaughter, and if Pitman's estimate of the 

 total number of elephants in Uganda and of their natural rate of 

 increase are correct, drastic action of this nature will not conflict 



