PREFACE 



A PREFACE usually explains, or professes to 

 explain, why a book is written. It may, as a 

 rule, be taken as read that scores of friends 

 have urged the author not to keep his know- 

 ledge from the world. These friends then 

 expect copies of the book when it appears. I 

 cannot plead any such wholesale mandate. The 

 book was written at the invitation of the pub- 

 lishers, and for reasons not unwelcome to those 

 who write books. 



Yet I would not have set about it if it had 

 not seemed to fill a gap. It attempts, in fact, 

 to be a kind of Nature-study book on the larger 

 scale, an introduction to the study of big game 

 in our overseas possessions. It is not merely 

 a book of adventure with wild animals, though 

 its pages contain many thrilling stories of actual 

 encounters told by those who took part in them. 

 But it aims at something over and above this 

 sensational treatment of the subject. 



Many volumes have been published during 



