xii AFRICAN NATURE NOTES 



or, to be more accurate, the extermination is 

 going on with appalling rapidity. The ordinary 

 naturalist, if he goes into the haunts of big game, 

 is apt to find numerous small animals of interest, 

 and he naturally devotes an altogether dispropor- 

 tionate share of his time to these. Yet such time 

 is almost wasted ; for the little animals, and especi- 

 ally the insects and small birds, remain in the land 

 long after the big game has vanished, and can then 

 be studied at leisure by hosts of observers. The 

 observation of the great beasts of the marsh and 

 the mountain, the desert and the forest, must be 

 made by those hardy adventurers who, unless ex- 

 plorers by profession, are almost certainly men to 

 whom the chase itself is a dominant attraction. But 

 the great majority of these hunters have no power 

 whatever of seeing accurately. There is no fonder 

 delusion than the belief that the average old hunter 

 knows all about the animals of the wilderness. 

 The Bushman may ; but, as Mr. Selous has shown, 

 neither the average English, Boer, nor Kafir hunter 

 in South Africa does ; and neither does the white 

 or Indian hunter in North America. Any one who 

 doubts this can be referred to what Mr. Selous has 

 elsewhere said concerning the rhinoceroses of South 

 Africa and the astounding misinformation about 

 them which the average South African hunter of 

 every type believed and perpetuated ; and in my 

 own experience I have found that most white and 

 Indian hunters in the Rocky Mountains are just as 

 little to be trusted when, for instance, they speak 

 of the grizzly bear and the cougar two animals 

 which always tend to excite their imaginations. 

 Finally, the few accurate observers among the men 

 who have seen much of big game are apt wholly 

 to lack the power of expression, and this means 

 that their knowledge can benefit no one. The love 

 of nature, the love of outdoor life, is growing in 



