406 
GAME-NETTING IN UZIGUA 
inquiry, I learnt that the average bag is eight or ten ; and that 
very often only one or two, even none at all, would be caught. 
Occasionally, a young bush-buck or Harvey’s duiker is 
bagged, and is a great prize. Dik-dik are scarce here. 
Wart-hog and bush-pigs often rush through the nets, damaging 
them badly; without being held. 
The final division of the meat is of interest, if only for 
its complication. The skin of each animal is stripped back 
from the limbs, which are then divided evenly among all the 
participants in the drive. The owner of a net in which a 
pact is caught, in addition to his share of the limbs, claims 
the whole trunk, head, and skin as his own, but without the 
stomach, liver, &c., which are the portion of the first man to 
see that particular animal. How the beater could prove 
that the actual pact he saw was caught in any one net 
remained a mystery to me, but to the natives seemed quite 
obvious. 
If a ypaa is caught without anyone laying claim to having 
been the first to see it, the stomach goes to the man tending 
the net which held it. 
The division is made by the oldest man present, whose 
decisions are accepted without a murmur ; but the miserable 
portion of meat falling to each man’s share, other than that 
of the net-owners, &c., seemed a most inadequate reward for 
the strenuous work of the day. 
It is in the desire to obtain some food-stuff to relieve the 
monotony of mealie-meal, which, unlike the case of most 
other tribes, forms the almost sole diet of the Wazigua, that 
the origin of this strenuous yet unproductive form of hunting 
is to be sought, rather than in any desire for sport, although 
the young boys derive much enjoyment from a drive. 
The older men are expert in snaring various species of 
field-rats, which they eat. Another rather disgusting food is 
the larvae and pupae of Anayphe infracta, which are found in 
masses inside a common thick cocoon spun firmly on a branch. 
These fat yellow caterpillars, with crimson hairs, are cooked 
with the addition of a little salt, and eaten by the Wazigua 
children. 
In consideration of the fact that so few paa and other 
