Introduction -* 



This is the sportsmanship of the future. The 

 present writer does not mean to say that he or any 

 other explorer, when and if they visited Africa, would 

 not still use every opportunity of obtaining good 

 specimens of rare wild beasts, birds, and reptiles for 

 our museums, and most of all for the information of 

 zoologists, who must perforce carry on many of their 

 studies within the pale of civilisation. Neither does 

 the writer of this Introduction condemn the killing of 

 leopards, lions, hyaenas, jackals, hippopotamuses, or 

 elephants at any rate in moderation - - where they 

 become really dangerous to human beings, to the 

 keeping of domestic animals, or to the maintenance of 

 cultivated crops. 



But these concessions do not cover, excuse, or indem- 

 nify the ravages of European and American sportsmen, 

 which are still one of the greatest blots on our twentieth- 

 century civilisation. 



Herr Schillings refers to the case of the late Dr. Kolb, 

 a German who came out to British East Africa in con- 

 nection with a Utopian undertaking called " Freeland," 

 and who, when his political scheme became impossible, 

 applied himself to the reckless slaughter of the big game 

 of British East Africa. In the course of two or three 

 years he had slain for no useful purpose whatever one 

 hundred and fifty rhinoceroses (a companion killed one 

 hundred and forty more), each one being a far more 

 interesting mammal than himself. At the end of this 

 career of slaughter, a rhinoceros killed him perhaps 

 appropriately. 



xiv 



