324 VILLAGES 



which one would feel inclined to lavish either aifec- 



tion or indulgence. 



The fowls and pigeons present no special points 

 of interest, save in the case of the former, and their 

 sole claim to distinction rests on the fact that as an 

 article of daily diet they are wholly indispensable. 

 The amount of mortality which goes on among the 

 members of this persistently hatchet-overshadowed 

 race is so appalling that in moderately populous 

 European centres the daily death-rate would hardly 

 be believed. The average cost of the fowl as pur- 

 chased from the native on the Zambezi to-day is 

 about at the rate of four or five for a shilling or its 

 equivalent. It furnishes, to all intents and pur- 

 poses, the staple article of animal food. In a small 

 family of three or four persons the daily slaughter 

 of fowls for this purpose can never be less than 

 five. Say, for example, 150 per month. Blantyre 

 to-day possesses a European population subsisting 

 almost entirely upon fowls which I estimate at 

 about 180 souls. It is, therefore, a matter of a 

 moment's calculation to ascertain that the annual 

 number of chickens consumed by this insatiable 

 settlement must aggregate somewhere about 

 109,000. I wonder if the Blantyre people realise 

 this, or have at heart the risk they run of de- 

 veloping in course of time some weird, bird-hke 

 peculiarity. 



The pigeons are in no way distinct from the 

 well-known common European varieties. My only 

 remark upon the African domestic or Muscovy duck 

 is, may your good fortune preserve you from ever 

 attempting to eat one. 



