239 
ch. x] PROTECTION OF BIG GAME 
time, and there is at present no danger of the extermina¬ 
tion of the lord of all four-footed creatures. Large 
reserves have been established on which various herds 
of elephants now live what is, at least for the time 
being, an entirely safe life. Furthermore, over great 
tracts of territory outside the reserves regulations have 
been promulgated which, if enforced as they are now 
enforced, will prevent any excessive diminution of the 
herds. In British East Africa, for instance, no cows 
are allowed to be shot save for special purposes, as for 
preservation in a museum, or to safeguard life and 
property, and no bulls with tusks weighing less than 
thirty pounds apiece. This renders safe almost all the 
females and an ample supply of breeding males. Too 
much praise cannot be given to the governments and the 
individuals who have brought about this happy result; 
the credit belongs especially to England, and to various 
Englishmen, it would be a veritable and most tragic 
calamity if the lordly elephant, the giant among existing 
four-footed creatures, should be permitted to vanish 
from the face of the earth. 
But of course protection is not permanently possible 
over the greater part of that country which is well fitted 
for settlement; nor anywhere, if the herds grow too 
numerous. It would be not merely silly, but worse 
than silly, to try to stop all killing of elephants. The 
unchecked increase of any big and formidable wild 
beast, even though not a flesh-eater, is incompatible 
with the existence of man when he has emerged from 
the stage of lowest savagery. This is not a matter of 
theory, but of proved fact. In place after place in 
Africa where protection has been extended to hippo¬ 
potamus or buffalo, rhinoceros or elephant, it has been 
found necessary to withdraw it because the protected 
