806 
GAME AND DISEASE 
The carcass of a rhino or elephant will mean good feeding 
for days, and this is the time to see hyaenas. When an epidemic 
is at work, all the fisi for miles congregate for the broken 
meat. When the anthrax was bad outside Nairobi, in this 
year, there were many of them about, and I frequently saw 
twenty or more in a day’s ride, and on one occasion saw in 
broad daylight twelve fisi by one kongoni carcass. 
During the war in East Africa, a point in favour of the 
hyaena was the fact that he greatly helped to keep the camps 
healthy. In an ordinary country the fact that ten or twenty 
animals a day were dying, would have meant endless fatigues 
to bury or burn ; but here it only meant putting the carcass 
out a hundred yards or so, and the hyaenas saw to the burial. 
Kipling remarked, with reference to the South African Cam- 
paign, ‘ One horse will move a camp, if it has been dead long 
enough.’ British East Africa has seldom had such experience, 
though, on the coast, it nearly happened, only it was not a 
horse but an overlooked Arab. 
I am told that during the movements of our mounted 
columns the lions followed close to get the abandoned horses, 
and in many cases became very troublesome. As shooting 
was forbidden, the lions became bold, and often came up to the 
outskirts of the camp. 
Whilst talking about scavengers, it is interesting to note 
that Africa is wonderfully free from blow-flies and scavenger 
beetles. We recently had a visit from a Mr. Le Soeuf, from 
the Sydney Zoo, who was particularly interested in our 
scavengers, as in Australia they suffer from a veritable plague 
of blow-flies. Here, a carcass is disposed of in a few hours, 
or even minutes ; for where vultures are thick, it does not take 
more than a few minutes to dispose of all the soft parts. On 
the other hand, Australia has practically no carnivora, and 
the carcass of a sheep lies till the blow-flies have laid their 
eggs, and so increase their breed. 
When in 1905 the game died in great numbers on the Athi, 
the carcasses were fly-blown, with the extraordinary result 
that the upper side of the hide, exposed to the sun, became 
hard and dry, whilst everything inside was eaten away. One 
therefore found a dry skin, covering a complete skeleton, 
