NATURAL HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA 
our lands in countless swarms. ‘These locusts are 
dainty food for the mungooses, and while they are 
plentiful they live almost exclusively on them. 
Mungooses which I kept in captivity in Natal 
preferred locusts to any other form of diet. Swarms 
of injurious caterpillars, termites, and other crea- 
tures which are a pest to man are swept out of 
existence by the mungoose. Thus does the active 
and alert mungoose render the most valuable of 
services to the human race, and it therefore be- 
hoves us to exercise the greatest of discretion in 
the destruction of this animal friend, which may 
‘at times forfeit its right to live by reason of its 
occasional depredations in the poultry yard. When 
the mungoose becomes a poultry thief then by all 
means destroy it; but when it is met with out in 
its native habitat away from the abode:of man, 
then leave it alone, else the balance of Nature may 
be upset, and retribution may fall upon the de- 
stroyer. The sportsman farmer who keeps no 
small stock such as poultry, but who desires to 
encourage the breeding of game birds on his estate, 
is quite justified in destroying the mungooses on 
his land, but he has no moral right to publicly 
proclaim this little animal to be a pest and a nuisance 
to man generally. 
20 
