PROTECTION OF BIG GAME 301 



puerile questions in Parliament — frequently framed to 

 mask some secondary object — and tlie replies given at 

 least illumine the outer darkness that reigns in some 

 official minds in Whitehall. 



Next we have trotted- out (and, mind you, not as 

 theories or even as honest beliefs, but set forth cate- 

 gorically as solid facts, proven and beyond doubt) all 

 those rule-of-thumb traditions that game transmit 

 diseases or the germs thereof. Statements are made in 

 positive terms that such-and-such a species conveys 

 infection of a particular kind — say " East-Coast fever " 

 — that another contaminates by ticks or similar parasites, 

 and so on. Witness the tsetse-fly, for example, and the 

 acres of theory written on that insect by men who 

 possibly never spent an hour on the study of its life- 

 history and economy. 



Now here, at any rate, we touch questions and 

 problems of serious importance ; and such shall not be 

 treated in any spirit of levity. None will deny that 

 there may exist foundation for such ideas. They may 

 be correct or they may not. But until the cpiestions 

 have been subjected to the test of scientific incjuiry, it 

 is mere prejudice to proclaim them as facts. 



These are complex points in biology. They involve 

 nothing less than the whole spacious cjuestion of human 

 interference with Nature's balance of life over vast areas 

 never hitherto subjected to the dominion of civilised 

 man. 



The determination of these, with other analo2:ous 

 points, is of the first importance to the development on 

 pastoral lines of our dominions in Eastern Africa ; and it 

 is the duty of the Home Government towards its African 

 Colonies to appoint technical experts to study these 

 cjuestions on the spot. Such investigation would 

 involve prolonged research — probably extending to 

 years. In the meantime, all opinion is merely specula- 

 tive, nothing more than guess-work ; and to condemn 

 the game beforehand is some degrees more absurd than 

 hanging a man first and trying him afterwards. 



