CHAP. XIV THE EXTERMINATION OF GAME 265 



considerable size can travel such distances, and since these 

 journeys are necessary in Africa, the continent has gained the 

 name of " the home of large mammals." 



The vast herds of game, however, which once roamed over 

 the steppes, are being rapidly reduced in size and number. 

 Plains which in the days of Andrew Smith, Oswell, and Gordon 

 Gumming were thronged with antelope, are now tenantless, and 

 many of the species seem destined soon to follow the quagga 

 and white rhinoceros into extinction. Man no doubt has played 

 a leading part in the annihilation of the enormous herds that 

 once thronged Gape Golony, The fact that, during the last 

 few years, the game has retreated from the Somali coast into 

 the interior, shows how easily it can be driven from a district. 

 Nevertheless I doubt the justice of charging sportsmen with 

 the main responsibility for the destruction of the big game. 



In South America a mammalian fauna, much richer than 

 that of Africa (for it included no less than fifty-eight genera of 

 animals larger than a big dog), has been destroyed since a time 

 which, though before the date of the human occupation of the 

 continent, was geologically recent. Man has no doubt helped 

 to exterminate some species, but his influence has probably 

 been insignificant compared with that of natural agencies. 



Lions are abundant on all the game-fields, and Jackson ^ 

 and Mackinnon once saw twenty-three in a single herd on the 

 Kapte plains. The number of animals such a herd must 

 destroy every year is enormous, and disease is probably even 

 more effective in the process of destruction. When Jackson ^ 

 returned from Uganda in July 1890 he saw, between Baringo 

 and Naivasha, herds varying in size from 100 to 600 buffalo 

 six times in a single day ; and Teleki,^ while at Njemps in 

 January 1888, shot no less than fifty-three individuals in the 

 month. 



In the same district in 1893 I did not see a single buffalo. 

 Five years before the buffalo was almost the commonest of the 

 big game in British East Africa. The whole number I saw 

 was four — a herd of three in the Tana valley, near Ngatana, and 

 a single bull in the valley of the Thika-thika. The explanation 



^ F. J. Jackson in Dig Game Shooting, Badminton Library, vol. i. (1894), p. 245. 



^ Op. cit. p. 217. 



'^ Hohnel, Zum Rudolf-See (1892), pp. 823-824 



