THE FUTURE OF ITS ANIMAL LIFE 375 



remain to develop the country which its game has 

 made attractive. 



The income of Angola would be largely in- 

 creased if game licences, limiting the number and 

 sex of the animals to be killed, were enforced ; for 

 the game protection ensured by such licences 

 would itself ensure continued and increasing 

 income as the game increased. 



There are game licences even in Angola, but 

 the fees charged are so small and the number of 

 animals it is permitted to kill so large, that trading 

 in skins, horns, and meat of the greater game 

 animals is an active and thriving business. I have 

 watched with melancholy interest wagon-loads of 

 such consignments unloaded at Mossamedes. 



With a licence costing 6 to a Portuguese, and 

 at the present rate of exchange less than l to an 

 Englishman, between 100 and 150 of the greater 

 game animals can be shot, and apparently more 

 than one licence can be obtained by the same 

 hunter within the year. 



Big game must have been very abundant in 

 Angola in the last three or four centuries, from 

 the old Portuguese, Dutch, and Italian histories 

 I have read. Eighty years ago, when Livingstone 

 crossed the country, there were still great herds 

 of game, and thirty or more years later, when 

 Cameron, Capello, Ivens, Serpa Pinto, Moiitciro, 

 and others travelled in Angola, they found game 

 still numerous. In the earlier years it was the 

 native who destroyed these splendid beasts con- 

 tinually as regards season, and indiscriminately as 

 regards sex, by snare and pitfall, and weapons of 



