440 SCIENCE IN AFRICA 



authority of Hornby (1936) goats leave the grass alone so long as 

 bushes and herbs are available and do little to initiate erosion. 

 Precise information about the effect of native small stock is lack- 

 ing, but almost invariably they are described as uneconomic and 

 unprofitable. Leakey (1934) has discussed the position of small 

 stock of the Kikuyu reserves in an illuminating paper. He points 

 out that in parts of the Kikuyu reserve an average family of six 

 has only i6*2 acres of land on which to produce its own food, 

 timber and firewood, as well as a surplus for sale, and to provide 

 grazing for herds of goats, sheep, and sometimes cattle. The great 

 increase in bride-price (a man is now required to hand over sixty 

 to one hundred sheep and goats on marriage) has, in Leakey's 

 opinion, added very largely to the overstocking problem. He con- 

 siders that the solution to the trouble in Kikuyu can only be brought 

 about by ( I ) reduction in bride-price instigated through the native 

 councils, (2) improved agricultural methods to obtain greater 

 return by intensive farming, and (3) making the uneconomic 

 small stock economic by a slow substitution of hardy wool-bearing 

 sheep and milking goats. It is hardly necessary to point out that 

 the last suggestion does not take into full consideration the fact 

 that milking goats require a much higher plane of nourishment 

 than the usual native goats, as has been shown by experiments at 

 Mpwapwa in Tanganyika. On the whole it appears necessary 

 to solve the local problems of overgrazing before, rather than 

 after, the introduction of milking goats or even wool-bearing 

 sheep. 



ANIMAL DISEASE 



GENERAL 



Before outlining somx of the great work which has been accom- 

 plished in Africa in the scientific study of animal diseases, it is 

 necessary to reach a definite conclusion on the relationship between 

 the control of disease and that of overstocking. There is no doubt 

 that the control of many of Africa's worst diseases has contributed 

 to the increase of stock to numbers which were formerly impossible, 

 and in certain cases may even have contributed to the trouble of 

 overstocking. It has even been suggested that before campaigns 



