SENEGAL SAND-GROUSE 95 
that information there has been each winter a 
regular invasion of British and other ardent sports- 
men, to each of the places named, to have “a 
little Sand-grouse shooting.” Result: at those 
places there are now none whatever, and no one 
living there seems to know anything more about 
Sand-grouse than that annually large numbers of 
men come with shooting equipment ready to make 
record bags, and go away without firing a shot. 
This being so, the present author thinks it best 
not to give localities, for though there is no 
danger of Sand-grouse ever being exterminated, as 
if persecuted they have the whole of these great 
African deserts to fall back and back upon, yet the 
hunger of the modern man to go out and kill 
something bearing the least resemblance to a game- 
bird is such, that if it were told that at certain 
places near the river they could be got, in a single 
season or two that place would be absolutely 
cleared. It seems rather churlish perhaps, but 
this book is not written to aid men to shoot 
Egyptian birds, but simply to recognise the 
birds seen; and the first essential is that there 
should be birds to see. Sand-grouse seem to be 
pleasant sociable birds, happy in their family life; 
at the non-breeding season they foregather into 
