MY SOMALI BOOK 209 



these must quickly fall a prey to other foes. I 

 have more than once remarked the quickness of a 

 jackal to scent blood and take up the trail of a 

 wounded buck, and have seen a pair pull down a 

 gazelle with a broken leg within a few minutes of its 

 being hit. 



It is a great mistake to ignore, with some, the pain 

 and suifering that undoubtedly does occur, but in far 

 the great majority of cases Nature is cruel only to be 

 kind ; the cruelty indeed is, in the main, only seeming, 

 and the life of the woods and prairies is a happy life. 

 It is a humiliating reflection that in order to see pain 

 and unhappiness among the beasts it is to the oft ill- 

 treated and down-trodden section leading the artificial 

 life of " domestic " animals among mankind that we 

 must direct our gaze ! 



This dissertation has carried me a considerable 

 distance from the man who started it by sajdng animals 

 do not feel pain. It may also be considered irrelevant 

 by the reader, who expected this little book to be a 

 mere record of slaughter, besides being liable to 

 criticism as in parts no more than a rechauffe of other 

 men's views. 



But I have no apologies to make. No man can be 

 a genuine shikari without becoming, if he was not 

 before, something of a naturalist ; so that occasional 

 speculations on natural history subjects are far from 

 being foreign to the scheme of this book. Indeed, it 

 is only because I venture to hope that it may not be 

 looked upon as altogether " a mere record of slaughter " 

 that it has been written at all. 



For the rest, if anything I have said induces my 



