THE WILD FAUNA OF THE EMPIEE 75 



THE DYING FAUNA OF AN EMPIEE. 



(Reproduced from the Satumday Beview, November 24, 1906, by permission 

 of the Proprietors.) 



Mr. Asquith is convinced that in the interests of the Empire 

 there ought to bo a larger gold reserve. After reading the new 

 Blue-hook on the ' Preservation of Wild Animals in Africa ' one is 

 not sure it may not he equally important for the Empire to have 

 a larger game reserve. This view is not reached directly we open 

 the new Blue-hook on the preservation of game in Africa. Im- 

 patience is our first feeling. Why are many English Blue-hooks 

 and State papers — the typical specimens- so badly done ? Why 

 have they as a rule no beginning, no end? These attributes are 

 proper to time and space, hut why attach them to a Government 

 publication ? Precis, we believe, is one of the subjects regularly 

 set at some of the Civil Service examinations ; is this the reason 

 why no attempt is made in a publication like this to gather up the 

 threads of the argument and present a clear, succinct statement of 

 the whole case for those who have not time to read nearly four 

 hundred foolscap pages of matter, half of it utterly unessential, 

 and most of the remainder consisting of details that ought to ho 

 put into those lumber-rooms of print, the appendices? lien; is 

 correspondence covering between ten and eleven years without 

 index, without preface, without summary, without the slightest 

 direction as to what the argument is all about save such as may 

 be given by the title. No wonder Charles Lamb condemned 

 King's Printer publications as biblia abibiia, impostors in books' 

 clothing. And these things are in the main made up for and read 

 by members of Parliament whose time surely is as crowded and 

 useful as that of most other English people ! 



However, once we have misspent our hour or two in finding 

 and losing and finding again our way through this 'mighty maze 

 without a plan,' the result is very satisfactory. In the tangle 

 of memoranda and enclosures and schedules and so forth we can 

 in the end discover and seize the threads of a deeply interesting 

 and important national matter. It is over ten years since Lord 

 Salisbury suddenly awoke to the fact that a grand national posses- 

 sion was being ruthlessly squandered, the great game of the 

 Empire. Thereupon he wrote promptly to the chief officials of 

 the East Africa Protectorate and Uganda an incisive letter ; and 

 we are much mistaken if this letter, with its ring of indignation, 



