With Flashlight and Rifle * 



giraffes may have been attacked by the rinderpest, but 

 I have seen no absolute proof of this. The giraffe has 

 suffered more in any case from other enemies. The 

 European and the Askari have been much more destruc- 

 tive. According as the hunting of elephants in East 

 Africa has become more difficult, and the pursuit of the 

 rhinoceros more dangerous, that of so easy a prey as 

 the giraffe has grown in popularity. Every European 

 hankers after the killing of at least one, if not several, 

 specimens. There have been districts, too, where the 

 Askari have literally used the giraffes for target-practice. 



So long as it was an understood thing that the black 

 soldiers might practise their rifle-shooting on the big 

 game, so as to make themselves marksmen in the event 

 of war, and so long as the " preservation of wild life " 

 was a dead letter, so long did it seem that there was no 

 hope of the giraffes escaping speedy annihilation. Much, 

 however, has been done by the Protection of Game 

 Conference in London, and especially by the regulations 

 of Count Gotzen, for German East Africa. 



Muhammadans do not eat giraffe-flesh, or else the 

 Sudanese Askari would probably have made still greater 

 ravages among the animals. Even the natives hunt 

 them. Poisoned arrows are made use of, and more 

 particularly pit-holes. They are well hidden, and the 

 giraffes cannot easily detect them, as they depend more 

 on their eyesight than their sense of smell. Thus these 

 " eye-animals," as Dr. Zells calls them, find great danger 

 in the pitfalls, unlike the rhinoceroses and elephants 

 which are "nose-animals." 



314 



