Page 387 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

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BRITISH CAME PRESERVES IN AFRICA AND AUSTRALIA 365
work,characteristicofthegreatestcolonizersonearth. Thosepreserves are worthy stones in the foundation of what one day will be a great British empire in Africa. The names of the men who proposed them and wrought them out should, in some way, be imperishably connected with them as their founders, as the least reward that Posterity can bestow.
In Major J. Stevenson-Hamilton's fine work, "Animal Life in Africa,"* the author has been at much pains to publish an excellent series of maps showing the locations of the various British game preserves in Africa, and the map published herewith has been based chiefly on that work. It is indeed fortunate for the wild life of Africa that it has today so powerful a champion and exponent as this author, the warden of the Transvaal Game Preserves.
Events move so rapidly that up to this date no one, so far as I am aware, has paused long enough to make ana publish an annotated list oftheAfricangamepreserves. HereinIhaveattemptedtobeginthat task myself, and I regret that at this distance it is impossible for me to set down under the several titles the names of the men who made these preserves possible, and actually founded them.
To thoughtful Americans I particularly commend this list as a showing of the work of men who have not waited until the game had been prac- tically exterminated before creating sanctuaries in which to preserve it. In view of these results, how trivial and small of soul seems the mercenary efforts of the organized wool-growers of Montana to thwart our plan to secure a paltry fifteen square miles of grass lands for the rugged and arid Snow Creek Antelope Preserve that is intended to help save a valuable species from quick extermination.
At this point I must quote the views of a high authority on the status ofwildlifeandgamepreservesinAfrica. ThefollowingisfromMajor Stevenson-Hamilton's book.
"It is a remarkable phenomenon in human aftairs how seldom the experienceofothersseemstoturnthescaleofaction. Thereare,Itake it, very few farmers, in the Cape Colony, the Orange Free State, or the Transvaal, who woidd not be glad to see an adequate supply of game upon their land. Indeed, the writer is constantly dealing with applica- tions as to the possibility of reintroducing various species from the game reserves to private farms, and only the question of expense and the difficulty of transport have, up to the present, prevented this being done onaconsiderablescale. When,therefore,therelativelysmallpopulations of such protectorates as are still well stocked with game are heard airily discussing the advisability of getting rid of it as quickly as possible, one realizes how often vain are the teachings of history, and how well-nigh hopelessitistoquotetheresultofsimilaractionelsewhere. Itremains
only to trust that things may be seen in truer perspective ere it is too late, and that those in whose temporary charge it is may not cast recklessly away one of nature's most splendid assets, one, moreover, which one lightly discarded, can never by any possibility, be regained.
Published by Heineniaiin, London, 1912.