THE WILD FAUNA OF THE EMPIEE 



59 



theso old bulls, making perhaps an extra charge for each additional 

 animal killed, or claiming a proportion of the ivory for the Govern- 

 ment. The chief object should be to preserve the breeding bulls, 

 females, and young ones, and to restrict the shooting to the 

 old bulls. 



In certain portions of the Protectorate the herds of elephants 

 occasionally do great damage in the plantations, and permission 

 has been given from time to time to the natives to kill a certain 

 number in protection of their fields. The result has usually been 

 that for one elephant killed and declared, probably twenty have 

 been wounded, of which a certain number would be sure to die. 

 Natives have no regard for size or sex, and fire bullets into the 

 nearest animal they can reach. Of course cultivation must be 

 protected, but in the Uganda Protectorate this should not be a 

 very difficult thing to effect, because there is an immense 

 abundance of natural food for the elephants ; they are not driven 

 by real necessity to feed in the cultivation, and a proper organisa- 

 tion should keep the herds away. If killing is to be done under 

 official sanction, it should be by officers at the direction of the 

 Commissioner or a responsible official. 



In Toru and Western Uganda there are other very large herds 

 of elephants which range the country between Euwenzori, Lake 

 Albert Edward, the Kagera Eiver, and Lake Victoria. There; seems 

 cause to suppose that these elephants are confined to this area 

 and do not cross into the Congo Free State region, although there 

 seems to be no reason why the elephants should not wander up 

 and down or across the African continent wherever food and 

 "Water is sufficient. The Congo elephants, however, show some 

 differences in comparison with the elephants east of the great line 

 from Tanganyika, Lake Albert Edward, Lake Albert, and the Nile. 



To the south-west of the southern end of Lake Albert, for 

 instance, the elephants are described by E. S. Grogan and others 

 to be smaller, to have a more vertical facial angle and very much 

 straighter tusks than the elephants of the Uganda Protectorate. 

 There is no doubt that the study of the natural history of the 

 African elephant is very far from complete. 



Next to elephants in point of size come hippopotamus. These 

 are found everywhere where there is sufficient water within the 

 Uganda Protectorate. In the Nile between Lake Victoria and 

 Lake Albert, and north of Lake Albert, they are found in enormous 

 herds, and constitute a very serious danger to navigation in small 

 boats or canoes. They unhesitatingly attack and break up or 

 sink any boat, without any provocation whatever. The current 

 idea that the hippopotamus is a perfectly harmless survival of an 

 ancient and interesting type of animal is far from the truth. 

 They are interesting without a doubt ; and were it not for their 

 boat-destroying propensities, there would be no reason for killing 

 them, as the damage they do is practically nil. The smallest 

 fence is sufficient to keep them out of the cultivation, but as no 

 means exist of preventing them from causing considerable loss of 

 life by destroying boats in the navigable waterway of the Nile, 



