WILD BEASTS' SKINS IN COMMERCE 259 



measures to stop this repulsive industry, and by 

 limiting the number of deer which may be killed by 

 individuals, prevent such destructive waste of animal 

 life. We wish that these laws could be extended to all 

 British Colonies and dependencies. Wherever big 

 game has entirely disappeared from districts where it 

 formerly abounded, and wherever whole species have 

 been exterminated, the mischief has in nearly every case 

 been done not to procure food, but solely to obtain the 

 creatures' skins. It is not the big-game hunter, or the 

 savage, or even the agriculturist, who destroys the 

 creatures, but the ' skin-hunter.' In every * new 

 country ' this wasteful and relentless enemy of animal 

 life has always appeared with the regularity of some 

 recurring plague, and made it his business to destroy 

 every creature larger than a hare. 



The advent of the skin-hunter takes places at a 

 particular period of development in recent settlements. 

 He is never among the early pioneers, but is a kind of 

 parasite in half-occupied territories, often intensely dis- 

 liked by the resident squatters, as he destroys the 

 game on which they partly depend, though he some- 

 times succeeds in converting these to his own evil ways. 

 In South Africa, for instance, the early Boer settlers, 

 like the early pioneers of North America, killed the 

 antelopes for meat, and used their skins for clothing. 

 They ate the venison, and from the hides they made 



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