EXTERMINATION IN ANIMAL LIFE. 405 



despite the exterminating proceedings of sportsmen. " A tale 

 of 380 head in three months fell to one sportsman."* Andersson 

 mentions that his assistant Hans once shot with his own hand 

 no fewer than nine Khinoceros in the course of a single day ;t 

 he also states that Oswell and Vardon killed in one year no fewer 

 than eighty-nine of these animals, t Instances could be multi- 

 plied and recorded of the excessive and wanton destruction of 

 the South African mammalian fauna, but they do not need 

 repetition. The Boer still loves to shoot for sport while there is 

 still a market to at least defray expenses ; European sportsmen 

 still expend large sums to achieve the result of a "record bag." 

 Could any game survive such a war ? Is game preservation, now 

 established, too late ? The Tsetse-fly afforded these unfortunate 

 ruminants some protection, for, though harmless to them, it 

 caused cfirtain death to oxen, and hence the waggon, with its 

 hunters, could not travel through the " fly country." But this 

 immunity will soon be a thing of the past. Hunters do not care 

 to shoot on foot in such a climate, nor could they easily do so, 

 and thus the Zulu country long held large game. " But now, 

 since it has become the fashion for the hunters to arm natives 

 to shoot for them, even in this country extermination is going 

 on rapidly. "§ 



In America the Bison is a well-known instance of man's 

 extirpation. For its destruction the telegraph-wire was actually 

 put in use. According to Mr. Baillie-Grohman, in the early 

 eighties, when the " Northern Pacific " was being built through 

 Dacota and Montana, the movements of the " Northern herd," 

 which was practically the last big band of Bison in existence, 

 was known from day to day to the gang of market-hunters along 

 the railway, who were supplying the contractors with the game 

 required to feed the four thousand navvies in their employ. || Those 

 engaged in the cattle-ranch business considered that the Bison 

 could not be slaughtered too quickly, " for were not their 

 thousands wasting the bunch-grass upon which the more valu- 

 able domestic kine, driven in vast herds from distant Texas, 



* ' A Naturalist in Mid- Africa,' p. 17. 



t ■ Lake Ngami,' p. 58. 



\ Ibid., p. 401. 



§ T. E. Buckley, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1876, p. 278. 



|| ' Fifteen Years' Sport and Life,' &c, p. 29. 



