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oh. xi] THE BUFFALO PLAGUE 
Where zebra and other game are abundant, as on the 
Athi plains, lions do not meddle with such formidable 
quarry as buffalo; on Heatley’s farm lions sometimes 
made their lairs in the same papyrus swamp with the 
buffalo, but hardly ever molested them. In many 
places, however, the lion preys largely, and in some 
places chiefly, on the buffalo. The hunters of wide 
experience with whom I conversed, men like Tarlton, 
Cuninghame, and Horne, were unanimous in stating 
that where a single lion killed a buffalo they had always 
found that the buffalo was a cow or immature bull, and 
that whenever they had found a full-grown bull thus 
killed, several lions had been engaged in the job. 
Horne had once found the carcass of a big bull which 
had been killed and eaten by lions, and near by lay a 
dead lioness with a great rip in her side, made by the 
buffalos horn in the fight in which he succumbed. 
Even a buffalo cow, if fairly pitted against a single lion, 
would probably stand an even chance, but of course 
the fight never is fair, the lion’s aim being to take his 
prey unawares and get a death grip at the outset, and 
then, unless his hold is broken, he cannot be seriously 
injured. 
Twenty years ago the African buffalo were smitten 
with one of those overwhelming disasters which are ever 
occurring and recurring in the animal world. Africa is 
not only the land, beyond all others, subject to odious 
and terrible insect plagues of every conceivable kind, 
but is also peculiarly liable to cattle murrains. About 
the year 1889, or shortly before, a virulent form of 
rinderpest started among the domestic cattle and wild 
buffalo almost at the northern border of the buffalo’s 
range, and within the next few years worked gradually 
southward to beyond the Zambesi. It wrought dreadful 
