CHAPTER IX 



THE WILD SHORES OF LAKE EDWARD 

 AND ITS GREAT GAME 



" Shadow shapes with sweeping horns 

 Glinting in the level rays, 

 Shapes that through a thousand dawns 



Feed along the meadow ways, 

 Roan and eland and the rest 

 Grazing toward the golden West." 



The Magic Plains. Verse IV. 



HOW the balance of nature is kept with regard to lions 

 has never been adequately explained. Nothing preys 

 on them and a lioness gives birth to from two to 

 four — sometimes five — cubs at a time. Yet, how is it they 

 do not overrun Africa ? 



Antelopes and other animals, having many enemies and 

 producing their kind one at a time, have overrun parts of 

 the continent to such an extent that human ingenuity has 

 been hard put to it to cope with their numbers. Environment 

 and scarcity or otherwise of food has little to do with it in 

 the case of lions, for they are frequently numerous in districts 

 where game is scarce and scarce where game is plentiful. 



Seeking a reason to account for their numbers being 

 kept within bounds, one perhaps finds it in the fact that 

 the lion, Uke some dogs, pigs and rabbits, has a malign instinct 

 found cropping out here and there throughout nature, and 

 not entirely absent even from man — that makes it eat its 

 own cubs. To guard against this race-suicide, the mother 

 lion has to resort to hiding them away from her lord and 

 master as best she can. 



107 



