206 AFRICAN NATURE NOTES CHAP. 



tion as the sight of smaller but more beautiful 

 animals can never do. When watching a moose 

 bull standing knee-deep on the edge of some 

 swampy lake, amidst the silence and the gloom of 

 sub-Arctic pine forests, I always seem to be carried 

 back to some far distant period of the world's 

 history ; and I remember that when hunting with 

 Bushmen amidst the dull monotony of the sun- 

 scorched, silent wastes of Western South Africa, the 

 sight of giraffes always stirred the same thought. 

 My rude companions were palaeolithic men, and 

 we were hunting strange beasts in the hot dry 

 atmosphere of a long past geological era. 



Giraffes are often spoken of as a scarce and fast 

 vanishing species, but this I cannot believe to be 

 really the case. There are vast areas of country, 

 extending right across the whole width of the 

 broadest part of Africa from Senegambia to Somali- 

 land, and from thence southwards to the northern 

 border of British Central Africa, throughout the 

 whole of which one or other of the different races 

 into which giraffes have lately been divided is to be 

 found, often in great abundance. Throughout the 

 greater part of this immense range, these magnifi- 

 cent, strangely beautiful creatures will, in my 

 opinion, continue to live and thrive for centuries 

 yet to come ; for the giraffe is, as a rule, an inhabit- 

 ant only of countries which, owing to the extreme 

 scarcity of water, can never be settled up by 

 Europeans, nor support anything but a sparse and 

 scattered population of native herdsmen. Here 

 they will never be hunted to any great extent by 

 Europeans on horseback, nor shot down in large 

 numbers for the sake of their hides, whilst their keen- 

 ness of sight and great range of vision will protect 

 them very effectually from all danger of extermina- 

 tion at the hands of native hunters as long as these 

 latter are only armed with primitive weapons. 



