NATURE 
bs) 
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1904. 
AFRICAN GAME. 
Big Game Shooting and Travel in South-East Africa. 
By F. R. N. Findlay. Pp. xii+313. (London: 
T. Fisher Unwin, 1903.) Price 15s. net. 
HERE is a great deal of interest to the zoologist 
and botanist in Mr. Findlay’s book on his ex- 
periences as a hunter in Portuguese South-East Africa 
and in Zululand. The area visited by this sportsman 
in Portuguese East Africa was the country in the basin 
of the Pungwe River (to the north-west of Beira). 
His journeys in this direction extended northwards to 
the verge of the Cheringoma Forest, which is not 
many days’ journey south of the Lower Zambesi. This 
country is very similar in appearance to the lowlands 
of British Central Africa, that is to say, it is quite 
tropical, and is without any aridity or absence of 
vegetation. The wild Hyphzene and date palms are 
excellently illustrated by the author’s photographs, so 
also are the huge baobab trees. A very good idea of 
the woodland of these countries (a tangle of wild date 
palms, acacias, and timber trees of evergreen foliage) 
is given on p. 75. The Hyphzne (H. crinita) appears 
in many photographs, noteworthy among which are 
those on pp. 27, 38, and 106. 
105, 107, and in one or two other illustrations 
probably the Borassus flabellifer; like so many other 
palms of this group, they have a bulge in the central 
portion of their lofty stem. <A fine specimen of a 
baobab tree is given on p. 83. 
Besides the many chapters on sport, there is one on 
game-preserving and on the possibility of domesti- 
cating and training African beasts. The author puts 
in a plea that further attempts should be made to 
domesticate the African elephant. Probably all the 
readers of NaturE would be agreed that every effort 
should be made—must be made—to prevent the ex- 
termination of this biggest of living land mammals, but 
the question of its domestication and usefulness to 
man is a very doubtful one. It is relatively easy to 
obtain young African elephants and to tame them in 
a few days or a few weeks. It is also easy to train 
them to bear burdens on their backs or to perform other 
simple tasks, but it cannot be said as they. grow up 
that they evince the same docility that is characteristic 
of the Indian elephant, while after the males have 
reached maturity they are positively dangerous. 
Something might be done with the adult female 
African elephant. The Romans certainly exported the 
African elephant (which in Roman times still inhabited 
parts of Mauritania) to Rome for the sports of the 
circus and for wild beast shows, but it is much more 
probable that the war elephants of the Carthaginians 
were derived from India by way of Syria. Still, the 
experiment with the African elephant has never been 
properly tried, and is worth trying, though of necessity 
something like half a century must elapse before its 
results can be considered conclusive, owing to the slow 
rate of growth of the elephant. 
NO. 1788, VOL. 69 | 
are 
This calculation is 
The palms given on pp. | 
| 
based on the assumption that supplies of domesticated 
African elephants will only be obtained by catching the 
young animal between one and two years old, and 
rearing it in captivity. Of course, if it were possible 
to work the keddah system and capture and tame the 
adult animal, a very few years would decide the 
practicability of the plan. 
There is a good deal said about the hippo in this 
book which is worth reading. The author describes 
the present condition of the hippopotamus in Zululand, 
where it still lingers in some of the rivers. He affirms 
that the white rhinoceros is still existing in Zululand 
between the forks of the White and Black Umvulosi 
Rivers, where it will soon, probably, be exterminated 
completely by colonists from Natal; for, as the author 
points out, the European natives and settlers of South 
Africa—the true Afrikanders—are utterly pitiless re- 
garding the wild game, and take no interest what- 
ever in the idea of its preservation, the only exceptions 
to the rule being the late Mr. Rhodes and one or two 
enlightened men of Dutch descent, whose herds of 
gnu and eland have very probably been destroyed 
during the recent South African war. The absolute 
extirpation of the magnificent fauna of South Africa, 
mainly at the hands of British sportsmen and colonists 
| (though the Boers made a good second) will probably 
remain to all time an ineffaceable stain on the reputa- 
tion of the Anglo-Saxon—a racial designation which 
as accurately includes the Dutch as the English. Of 
course, it was not to be expected that these vast herds 
of game would be left in sole possession of a country 
which is adapted in many respects for the white man’s 
habitation, but it is inconceivable that South African 
and Imperial statesmen could during the whole of the 
nineteenth century have been so utterly without an 
appreciation of zoology as to have made no provision 
in the establishment of reserves for the retention of 
a fauna whch made South Africa one of the most 
interesting countries in the world. It is true that some 
fifty years ago a plea was put in for the preservation 
of the lion in the Orange Free State, but this was so 
that the lions might prey on the immense herds of 
gnus and zebras which were devouring all the grass. 
One inducement to exterminate the antelopes, zebras, 
and quaggas lay in the value of their hides, which at 
one time formed an important article of export from 
Cape Colony. In 1860, when the late Duke of Saxe- 
Coburg visited the present Orange River Colony, a 
big hunt was organised. A thousand natives assisted 
in driving the game, and it was computed that some- 
thing lilke 25,000 antelopes, zebras, and ostriches were 
driven before the Prince and his staff, and that the 
battue, in which many Europeans and natives took 
part, resulted in the slaughter of more than 6000 head 
of game. The story is much the same throughout 
our self-governing colonies—Canada, Australia, New 
Zealand, British Guiana, and Fiji take no heed of the 
local fauna, and witness its extirpation with apathy, if 
not with a kind of foolish triumph over nature, while 
with childish assiduity they attempt to domesticate the 
birds and beasts of Europe. 
Though the writer of this book preaches so 
effectually in the cause of saving what still remains of 
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