Page 105 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

DESTRUCTION BY DISEASES 83
which cries "Kill! Kill!" and at once runs amuck among suddenly discovered wild animals, is slowly being replaced by a more humane and intelligent sentiment. This is one of the hopeful and encourag- ing signs of the times.
The destruction of wild animals by natural causes is an interesting subject, even though painful. We need to know how much destruction is wrought by influences wholly beyond the control of man, and a few cases must be cited.
Rinderpest in Africa.—Probably the greatest slaughter ever wrought upon wild animals by diseases during historic times, was by rinderpest, a cattle plague which afflicted Africa in the last decade of the previous century. Originally, the disease reached Africa by way ofEgypt,andcameasanimportationfromEurope. FromEgyptit steadily traveled southward, reaching Somaliland in 1889. In 1896 it reachedtheZambesiRiverandenteredRhodesia. Fromthenceitwenton southwardalmosttotheCape. Notonlydiditsweepawayninetyper- cent of the native cattle but it also destroyed more than seventy-five per cent of the buffalos, antelopes and other hoofed game of Rhodesia. It was feared that many species would be completely exterminated, buthappilythatfearwasnotrealized. Thebuffaloandantelopeherds were fifteen years in breeding up again to a reasonable number, but thanks to the respite from hunters which they enjoyed for several years, finallytheydidrecover. ThroughoutBritishEastAfricathesupplyof big game in 1905 was very great, but since that time it has been very greatly diminished by shooting.
Caribou Disease.—From time to time reports have come from the Province of Quebec, and I think from Maine and New Brunswick also, of many caribou having died of disease. The nature of that disease has remained a mystery, because it seems that no pathologist ever has had an opportunity to investigate it. Fortunately, however, the alleged disease never has been sufficiently wide-spread or continuous to make appreciable inroads on the total number of caribou, and apparently the trouble has been local.
Scab in Mountain Sheep.—"Scab" is a contagious and persist- ent skin disease that affects sheep, and is destructive when not con- trolled. Fifteenyearsagoitprevailedinsomeportionsofthewest. In Colorado it has several times been reported that many bighorn moun- tain"" sheep were killed by "scab," which was contracted on wild moun- tain pastures that had been gone over by domestic sheep carrying that disease. From the reports current at that time,we inferred that about 200 mountain sheep had been affected. It was feared that the disease would spread through the wild flocks and become general, but this did not occur, It seems that the remnant flocks had become so isolated from one another that the isolation of the affected flocks saved the others.
Lumpy-Jaw in Antelope and Sheep.—It is a lamentable fact that some, at least, of the United States herds of prong-horned antelope are afflicted with a very deadly chronic infective disease known as actin-