-* The Preservation of African Game 



natives of India have contrived to live comfortably side 

 by side with herds of elephants. Hippopotamuses are so 

 apt to destroy plantations that they certainly have to be 

 got rid of in all neighbourhoods in which Europeans 

 settle down. Elephants also arc otten very destructive 

 in the same way. The preservation of elephants is 

 undoubtedly against the interests of European colonists ; 

 and indeed the preservation of any species of wild animal 

 would seem to be against the interests of colonists. 



Baboons, which any one is free to kill, are also very 

 harmful to plantations. Cultivators of millet and other 

 grains have to employ watchmen to keep off both the 

 apes and small birds from the crops during the very brief 

 period when these are ripening. The natives erect sheds, 

 raised up on four poles, and from these, with the help of 

 ropes, which they fasten across their fields, and to which 

 they attach feathers and other scares, they frighten away 

 wild boars, which do a lot of damage to crops, and which 

 are difficult to get rid of. 



Besides these animals and many rodents and 

 meerkats, certain of the smaller antelopes occasionally 

 are a nuisance to settlers. All other kinds of animals 

 avoid the neighbourhood of man, and keep away on 

 the velt, where they can do no injury. Rhinoceroses 

 especially are very seldom known to come near inhabited 

 districts, and the same may be said of giraffes and the 

 larger antelopes. I am anxious to insist upon this point, 

 because both Prince Lovvenstein and myself were assured, 

 greatly to our surprise, that the giraffe exceeds all other 

 animals in the way it destroys the East African forests. 



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