46 THE SOCIETY FOE THE PRESERVATION OF 



in these localities, it never follows the wild animals if they are 

 driven away, so that no danger need he feared that if game is 

 protected the deadly tsetse fly will necessarily be present. What 

 is required is that a fly-belt of country ought not to be on the out- 

 side of, or near to, a preserve. Thus there is a part of the Uganda 

 Eailway which passes through tsetse-fly country before reaching 

 the Athi plains above referred to, in which the game ought not to 

 be protected, since the only known mea,ns of getting rid of the 

 tsetse fly from its habitat is'by the destruction of wild animals on 

 which it lives and from whose blood the seeds of disease are derived, 

 which, if injected into a domestic animal, causes death through 

 Trypanosomiasis, the domestic animal not being immune to the 

 influence of the blood parasite, as are both man and the wild 

 animals of the country. 



' It may, however, be said that it is of little use creating game 

 reserves from which European sportsmen are excluded unless the 

 natives are equally debarred from killing game. If we reflect, 

 however, how little damage the most expert native huntsmen were 

 able to produce upon the herds of game seen by the early ex- 

 plorers, we shall understand that it has only been since firearms 

 were introduced and the sale of skins or trophies encouraged that 

 the native has produced any appreciable diminution of the game. 



' Already, by international agreement, modern firearms are not 

 sold to natives and the trade in gunpowder is limited. There are 

 other good reasons why firearms of every description should not 

 he allowed to pass into native hands, so that no difficulty can arise 

 in limiting the indigenous population to their old methods of 

 hunting by means of the spear, bow and arrow, nets, and pit- 

 fa,! Is, with 'which, so long as the inducement of selling the skins 

 and trophies is not offered, no injury can arise to the game. We 

 already have in some of our African protectorates laws which make 

 the sale and export of skins and horns of game illegal, unless 

 obtained by the holders of shooting licences, so that the tempta- 

 tion of killing more game than is needed by the native as food will 

 not arise. 



' These are a few of the observations I would wish to make, and 

 I sincerely hope you may be successful in getting steps taken to 

 preserve the native Fauna, which we can only regard as_ held in 

 trust, and in saving the many and beautiful forms of animal life 

 still so fully represented in our own Tropical African possessions.' 



' The cry against the game reserves as the possible spreaders 

 of the fly is nonsense. The fly never follows the game, although 

 it will come back to old haunts from which it has been expelled 

 by the temporary absence of the game on which it fed : that is, 

 the fly has only certain localities in which it lives and to which it 

 is limited. 



' From this it follows that a game reserve should not include a, 

 fly belt near its border, and a public road or railway through a 

 ^ame reserve should avoid a part in which the fly exists.' 



