THE GAME BIRDS OF CAPE COLONY. 307 



thought for their game birds, or, as has happened 

 with much of the nobler game of the country, their 

 extinction might by this time have been partially 

 wrought in certain districts. 



It would be interesting to fling aside the curtain 

 that separates the present from the future, and to be 

 able to look forward fifty years, in order to ascertain 

 what manner of man the Boer of that period will 

 be. Not improbably, having shot off the last 

 of his " groote wilde " (big game), he may be 

 found to be bestowing as much care and attention 

 on his feathered game as any English squire ; to 

 have devised strict game laws and a stern code of 

 shooting etiquette ; and to be pursuing his day's 

 shooting over a brace of highly-bred dogs with as 

 much zest and punctiliousness as an English country 

 gentleman of thirty years back. At all events, 

 let us hope such may be the case. The sportsmen 

 of these islands of ours, who wander nowadays so 

 far afield in search of game, whether furred or 

 feathered, can have but little conception of the 

 diversity of feathered game that lie everywhere at 

 hand in South Africa, or I imagine the Cape Colony 

 would be much more exploited by fowlers than it 

 has been hitherto. Accommodation is cheap, living 

 plentiful and wholesome, if plain, and any English 

 gentleman desirous of a quiet shooting tour would 

 find in the Colony numbers of farmers only too 

 delighted to put him up and show him sport. 



Within the Cape Colony alone there are to be 

 found no less than five or six different kinds of 

 francolin, six or seven kinds of bustard, two species 

 of quail, one of the guinea-fowl, one or two of 

 the sand-grouse family, and two sorts of snipe. 



