December 7, 191 1] 



NATURE 



179 



Foreign Office took up the matter in the early 

 'nineties, and through Sir Clement Hill and others 

 iuade arrangements with European nations for the 

 institution of game regulations throughout Africa 

 which might check the devastating raids of sports- 

 men. The movement was accentuated by a revela- 

 tion of the wonders of the equatorial East African 

 fauna, which really rivalled those of Cape Colony 

 and Natal in the days of Roualeyn Gordon Cumming. 

 European opinion in Africa became sharply divided 

 into two classes. There were the officials and some 

 if the missionaries who, backed by the men of science 

 if Europe, thought quite as much of the natural 

 wonders of these African States, and regarded them 

 as being an asset of equal importance with the 

 profits which might be derived by the opening up of 

 the country under the energy of European planters or 

 capitalists. To some of us the lion, the elephant, 

 the giraffe, the eland, kudu, sable antelope, and oryx 

 were quite as important subjects of the new protec- 

 torates, and as deserving of reasonable protection, as 

 the human inhabitants, and from an aesthetic point 

 of view this argument was reasonable. On the other 

 hand, the European immigrants and most of the 

 natives clamoured for the right to destroy the wild 

 game when and as they pleased. The Europeans, 

 indeed, were seized by a kind of lust for blood which 

 distracted them a good deal from the coffee, cotton, 

 >ugar cane, rubber, and tobacco planting which 

 -should have occupied most of their energies. They 

 could not let an elephant or a buffalo, a rhinoceros 

 or a giraffe, live within thirty miles of their station. 

 The natives, forbidden to kill one another any longer, 

 and unable to fight with the European, wished to 

 devote their warlike enterprise to the destruction of 

 big game, especially as the products of the chase were 

 -o marketable. 



On the whole, the wishes of the official element, 

 -upported by the home Governments, prevailed, 

 xame reserves were instituted, and to a great 

 jxtent made valid by the application of laws. 

 Highly-priced licences checked indiscriminate shoot- 

 ing on the part of Europeans, while the natives were 

 seldom able to obtain arms of precision necessary to 

 the rapid slaughter of game. So it was hoped in 

 time a balance might be struck, and all the European 

 possessions in Africa be studded with beautiful 

 Government parks and paradises, in which would be 

 preserved from extinction the wonderful fauna and 

 the interesting flora of the most backward of the 

 continents. In East Africa it seemed as if this policy 

 of game preservation was a good one, even from . a 

 commercial point of view. The marvellous natural 

 zoological gardens which it produced along the track 

 of the Uganda railway brought every winter hundreds 

 of well-to-do tourists, who spent much money in the 

 country and amongst the natives. Then also it was 

 thought that the African elephant might after all be 

 harnessed to our industries, or allowed to breed as a 

 provider of ivory ; we might domesticate the eland 

 and the bush-buck, and even do for the African buffalo 

 what the European colonists of tropical Asia did for 

 that of India several thousand years ago. 



But at this stage — about three years ago — a new 

 factor entered into the consideration of the problem. 

 It was suspected that in many parts of Africa the 

 existence of big game was actually prejudicial, and 

 even dangerous, to the coexistence of the human 

 race, black, white, or yellow. It seemed as though 

 other creatures than man and monkeys must act as 

 reservoirs of micro-organisms, especially trypano- 

 somes, provocative of disease. Consequently, so long 

 || as they coexisted with man, the various species of 

 ii? tsetse-fly, of tick, and flea, would, even if infected 



NO. 2197, VOL. 88] 



human beings were isolated, have always the means 

 of renewing their supplies of disease germs. In this 

 way, epidemics of disease might be constantly re- 

 newed amongst man in Africa and his domestic 

 animals. Certain game reserves, such as the elephant 

 marsh in the southern part of Nyasaland, became 

 peculiarly obnoxious to the European settlers round 

 about. They stated that the herds of buffalo and other 

 game that had increased and multiplied within this 

 reserve were sources from which the tsetse-fly obtained 

 at once its livelihood and its means of doing harm. 



As regards the question of the relations between the 

 tsetse-fly and the big game, it has been pointed out 

 in a very authoritative manner by Sir Alfred Sharpe 

 and other deservedly recognised authorities in the 

 field that there are numerous districts in Africa 

 almost entirely without big game which, nevertheless, 

 swarm with tsetse-fly to such an extent that thev 

 are practically uninhabitable by man. In other words, 

 that the existence of buffaloes, kudus, elands, zebras, 

 &c., is not necessary to the perpetuation of the tsetse- 

 fly, which apparently finds some other creature than 

 these large mammals to supply it with the blood nutri- 

 ment it requires or desires. Consequently, this argu- 

 ment does not hold as a justification for the extirpa- 

 tion of big game. Moreover, in many parts of West 

 Africa where disease-conveying species of tsetse 

 (Glossina) exist, there is very little big game. But 

 within the last twelve months or so it has been proved 

 conclusively by the biologists at work in Uganda that 

 the large antelopes of that country are the hosts of 

 dangerous trypanosomes, amongst others, of the try- 

 panosome which causes sleeping sickness ; and that 

 if this terrible malady is to be extirpated from the 

 Uganda Protectorate, practically all the larger ante- 

 lopes must go ; or at any rate, that their extirpation 

 must be carried out rigorously in those well-wooded 

 regions close to water inhabited by the dangerous 

 Glossina palpalis. 



Such discoveries, of course, have given great 

 encouragement to that party among us specially 

 represented by pioneers and colonists on the spot, 

 eager for the unlimited destruction of wild life. 

 There is, indeed, need for a wise administration of 

 the law in this respect, and for the Colonial Office to 

 obtain and to act on the most careful scientific advice. 

 The same people that wish no check to be put on 

 their blood-lust in regard to the destruction of 

 rhinoceroses, of giraffes, of buffaloes and elephants, 

 are equally eager to shoot all striking or beautiful 

 birds, especially the various forms of white heron 

 (egret) and crane — notably the crowned crane. Now 

 it has been shown that certain forms of heron, 

 especially the white ones, live almost entirely on 

 insects and ticks, pursuing them by the waterside 

 and attaching themselves to herds of domestic cattle 

 or wild game, whom they relieve of their parasites 

 and of the infesting flies. Similarly, crowned cranes, 

 besides being very beautiful, are in every way the 

 friend of man. They live chiefly on grasshoppers and 

 locusts, they eat nothing that is of any value to man. 

 and they are constantly at work destroying his 

 enemies. In many regions of Africa the giraffe, the 

 oryx, the elephant, rhinoceros, zebra, &c., are not in 

 a position to be harbourers of trypanosomes, or if they 

 are, these regions are entirely free from tsetse-flies. 



The whole question is so important to the world 

 in general, both for the extirpation of disease and the 

 preservation of beauty and interest in fauna and flora, 

 that it would be well to hold a Brussels Con- 

 ference once in five years to discuss these questions, 

 in regard to the destruction of harmful insects and the 

 preservation or destruction of birds and beasts. 



H. H. Johnston. 



