12 THE SOCIETY FOR THE PRESERVATION OF 



Another point to which we would attach importance is the sale 

 of horns and of hides — I mean, of course, their export or their sale 

 on a large scale. That has heen responsible for enormous 

 destruction — I do not mean only in South Africa, but elsewhere. 

 Experience shows that hide hunters have been responsible for 

 terrible destruction, and we should like to see the export of horns 

 and hides restricted. 



Again, a very important measure which has been adopted in 

 most of the territories, not in all, is that game licensees should be 

 required to make a return of the game they kill. We believe that 

 most sportsmen will always make an honest return ; but the fact 

 that they have to make a return does, we believe, exercise a con- 

 siderable moral restraint upon sportsmen, some of them very 

 young, who get bitten by the ' buck fever,' and who fire away far 

 more shots than they need. 



Another point is with regard to the game officer; in many of 

 these territories there is an excellent and efficient game officer, 

 and there ought to be such an officer in all of them. He is placed 

 in a very difficult position ; he is generally a junior officer, and 

 we contend that the responsibility of enforcing the law ought to 

 rest upon a higher official — that the highest Commissioner in each 

 territory ought to be made responsible for any prosecutions or 

 other enforcement of the law, and that the junior officer should 

 not be required to take the very invidious course of instituting 

 prosecutions without the direction of his superior. 



Then with regard to the native question, which is, of course, a 

 very difficult question : we should like to call your attention, if it 

 has not been already called, to the valuable Report of the Chief 

 Commissioner in British Central Africa. He has been extremely 

 successful in putting on a gun tax, and in reducing the number 

 of weapons in the hands of the natives. 



The Colonial Skcrktaky : Do you refer to Sir Alfred Sharpe? 

 Mr. Edwabd Buxton : Yes, Sir Alfred Sharpe. Most of the 

 destruction due to natives, I think, will be found to be carried on by 

 their ancient methods. Now, 1 do not know whether I am speak- 

 ing the view of all those present, but my own feeling is that you 

 cannot interfere with their ancestral methods — their trapping and 

 their pitfalls. A year ago I was in Kordofan, and I found there 

 immense numbers of native snares, which I have no doubt are 

 very successful in catching the oryx and gazelles, because I found 

 in the old deserted camps of the Arabs there quantities of the 

 remains of those animals, obviously caught in that way. Well, 

 they have always done so for an indefinite period : they have 

 used those means, and I do not think it would be very easy, even 

 if it is expedient, to interfere with them. But it is quite a 

 different thing when you come to modern weapons, and we ask 

 that special care should be taken, either by the methods adopted 

 by Sir Alfred Sharpe or others, to prevent modern weapons getting 

 into the hands of the natives, on the ground of the claims of the 

 game if on no other; and we hope that care will be taken, and 



