THE PRESERVATION OF GAME. 23I 



these animals in what are at present quite inaccessible hunting-grounds in 

 Jubaland. 



There only remains, then, the not uninteresting Neumann's hartebeest. The area 

 inhabited by this animal is by no means large, being bounded roughly east and west 

 by the Aberdares and Lake Nakuru, and north and south by Lakes Solai and Naivasha.* 

 The whole of this land has been apportioned out to settlers, and so the administration 

 have now practically no hold over the preservation of this animal. It is to be hoped, 

 however, that the Neumann's hartebeest will be preserved by the private enterprise of 

 some of the settlers on whose land it occurs. 



Next as to licences. These are mainly of two kinds, a comparatively cheap one 

 for settlers, to allow them to procure a meat supply by the killing of certain quantities 

 of the commoner game animals, and a more expensive licence on which sportsmen 

 may shoot a selection of both the rare and the common animals for trophies. The 

 traveller must take out the sportsmen's licence whether he wants trophies or not, as 

 the settler's licence does not apply to him. 



The game animals allowed on a settler's licence are of so common a kind that at 

 present there is no danger of their extermination. 



There is another licence, the landholder's licence. This allows a holder of land 

 to kill practically anything on his own land. Many of the landholders are Boers, and 

 many others take little interest in game, but on the contrary regard it as a menace to 

 their crops, so it is not to be expected that by their own enterprise they will go to 

 the trouble of preserving any animals. No doubt a few large landholders w^ill make 

 rules for the shooting and preserving of game on their lands, but the majority will 

 shoot, and let their employes shoot, without thought for the future. This means that 

 in course of time the majority of the game animals occupying private lands, and 

 especially on small holdings, will disappear. Therefore we must look to lands not 

 yet settled on and the reserves for the future preservation of game. As the sports- 

 man cannot shoot over private lands, the districts that will interest him will be 

 those unsettled-on lands that are ever becoming less and less. 



British East Africa is so rapidly being covered by settlers that it seems to 

 me that the Government will shortly have to take some sort of steps to establish 

 shooting-reserves for the benefit of sportsmen, in addition to the game-preservation 

 reserves already extant ; for all available land is being apportioned to settlers, to 

 reserves, and to native cultivations, and there will soon be no land for the sportsman 

 to shoot over ; thus the administration will lose the revenue they now receive from 

 licences, and a very considerable sum it amounts to. Moreover, it is presumably 



* Excepting, of course, the country in which it was originally discovered, now Abyssinian territory. 



