GAME AND DISEASE 
809 
five, and here in two months about three hundred kongoni 
died. Other game was plentiful, but no other animal was 
reported as dying in the area. I kept men on the area for a 
month after the disease had apparently stopped, and also 
sent others with prepared swabs to work right through the 
reserve, but with negative result. 
The Masai in my employ insist that this was the same 
disease which every few years breaks out in one district or 
another amongst the game ; but it is interesting to note that 
this outbreak was during the wet season, while ‘ ngar narua ’ 
is usually met with in the dry season, or, to quote the Masai, 
* when the grass is white ’ (dry and bleached by the sun). 
I think in 1905 there was the worst outbreak of ngar 
narua that I can remember, the game dying on the Athi 
Plains till they lay so thick that hyaenas and vultures could 
not deal with them. The mortality was worst near Eldonyo 
Sabuk and Lucania Hills, where thousands died. These 
districts have now been settled for many years without any 
further outbreak of anthrax — a disease which, according to 
all authorities, infects for years the soil where an anthrax 
carcass has lain. 
Ol Ki Piri 
During the present outbreak of pleuro, no report of 
the disease amongst the game has been received. I have 
had men down in the districts where this disease exists, and 
they report that eland and buffalo are feeding over the 
same ground as the affected cattle, without any apparent 
ill-effect. Pleuro, so far as my limited knowledge goes, is a 
disease the transmission of which needs immediate contact 
between a sick beast and a healthy one, and therefore is less 
likely to be passed from cattle to the game. Even if passed, 
it may not spread, owing to the absolute ‘ law ’ amongst wild * 
animals that a sick beast at once leaves the herd, the solitary 
sick animal having but small chance of living for many hours. 
Nature takes her own steps to prevent the spread of disease. 
The old Masai tell me, however, that when the first bad 
outbreak of pleuro took place — which was some six years before 
Y 
