PROTECTION OF BIG GAME 
301 
puerile questions in Parliament—frequently framed to 
mask some secondary object—and the replies given at 
least illumine the outer darkness that reigns in some 
official minds in Whitehall. 
Next we have trotted-out (and, mind you, not as 
theories or even as honest beliefs, but set forth cate¬ 
gorically as solid facts, proven and beyond doubt) all 
those rule-of-thumb traditions that game transmit 
diseases or the germs thereof. Statements are made in 
positive terms that such-and-such a species conveys 
infection of a particular kind—say “ East-Coast fever ” 
—that another contaminates by ticks or similar parasites, 
and so on. Witness the tsetse-fly, for example, and the 
acres of theory written on that insect by men who 
possibly never spent an hour on the study of its life- 
history and economy. 
Now here, at any rate, we touch questions and 
problems of serious importance; and such shall not be 
treated in any spirit of levity. None will deny that 
there may exist foundation for such ideas. They may 
be correct or they may not. But until the questions 
have been subjected to the test of scientific inquiry, it 
is mere prejudice to proclaim them as facts. 
These are complex points in biology. They involve 
nothing less than the whole spacious question of human 
interference with Nature’s balance of life over vast areas 
never hitherto subjected to the dominion of civilised 
man. 
The determination of these, with other analogous 
points, is of the first importance to the development on 
pastoral lines of our dominions in Eastern Africa ; and it 
is the duty of the Home Government towards its African 
Colonies to appoint technical experts to study these 
questions on the spot. Such investigation would 
involve prolonged research—probably extending to 
years. In the meantime, all opinion is merely specula¬ 
tive, nothing more than guess-work; and to condemn 
the game beforehand is some degrees more absurd than 
hanging a man first and trying him afterwards. 
