CHAPTER XXV 
PROTECTION OF BIO GAME 
(SPECIALLY IN RELATION TO BRITISH EAST AFRICA) 
A main outstanding danger to big game lies in its 
abundance. Its very numbers deceive; and especially 
does that remark apply in Africa, where many of the 
larger animals live conspicuous on the open plain. 
It is not matter for wonder that new-comers, or 
settlers (men, it may be, who have never before in their 
lives seen game, great or small), conclude that, amidst 
abundance, they may slaughter without stint. 
But are the thoughtful among us never going to learn 
the obvious lesson—shall we always blind our eyes to 
the staring examples of the past? AVhole faunas, as 
rich as those that yet survive, and richer, have been 
swept off the face of the earth during our generation and 
under our eyes. Witness that abominable massacre of 
the bison on Western-American prairies. That was 
accomplished in a single decade—in the ’eighties. 
Witness, again, the destruction of the reindeer in Norway 
in the ’nineties. That piece of barbarism occupied but 
live years—the five that succeeded the introduction of 
cordite and cheap repeating-rifles. Witness, thirdly, the 
tale of ceaseless slaughter maintained during half-a- 
century on South-African veld—whole genera and 
families of beautiful creatures decimated or extirpated 
root and branch by a merciless Boeotian race and scarce 
a record left behind. 
After the mischief has been done the world laments 
it. Herculean efforts are then made to preserve a few 
wretched remnants. Crocodile-tears flow in scientific 
295 
