quest for a really large male elephant for the American Museum found and
looked over _a thousand_ males without finding one that was really fine
and typical. All the photographs of elephant herds that were taken by
Kermit Roosevelt and Akeley show a striking absence of adult males and
of females with long tusks. There are only young males, and young
females with small, short tusks. The answer is--the white ivory hunters
have killed nearly all the elephants bearing good ivory.

The slaughter of big game is going on furiously in British East Africa
because the Uganda Railway opens up the entire territory to hunters.
Anyone, man or woman, who can raise $5,000 in cash can go there and make
a huge "bag" of big game. With a license costing only $250 he can kill
enough big game to sink a ship.

The bag limit in British East Africa is ruinously extravagant. If the
government desires the extermination of the game, such a bag limit
surely will promote that end. It is awful to think that for a petty sum
any man may buy the right to kill 300 _head_ of hoofed and horned
animals, of 44 species, not counting the carnivorous animals that also
may be killed. That bag limit should _immediately_ be reduced _75 per
cent_!

As matters stand to-day in British East Africa, the big game of the
country, outside the three preserves, is absolutely certain to
disappear, in about one-fourth of the time that it took South Africa to
accomplish the same result. The reasons are obvious:--superior
accessibility, more deadly rifles, expert professional guides, and a
widespread craze for killing big game. With care and economy, British
East Africa should furnish good hunting for two centuries, but as
things are going on to-day, twenty years will see a tremendous change
for the worse, and a disappearance of game that will literally astonish
the natives.

German East Africa and Uganda will not exterminate their quotas of big
game quite so soon. The absence of railways is a great factor in
game-existence. The Congo Free State contains game and sporting
possibilities--on the unexplored uplands _between the rivers_,--that are
as yet totally unknown to sportsmen at large. We are accustomed to
thinking of the whole basin of the Congo as a vast, gloomy and
impenetrable forest.

There is to-day in Africa a vast reserve supply of grand game. It
inhabits regions that are either unknown, or most difficult to
penetrate. As a species in point, consider the okapi.