It was said of William the Conqueror that "he loved the tall deer as though he were their father." If this be true, then he has in these latter days been only too faithfully imitated in South Africa by Boer and by native alike; for the love which they have displayed towards the great game animals of the region between the Cape and the Zambesi has been so paternal that of the teeming millions of Mammalia which formerly graced veldt and karroo, but a sadly diminished remnant has escaped their devastating solicitude.
The sad list of vanished or vanishing species already includes the Blaauwbok, an Antelope whose brief history is a record of speedy extermination at the hands of the early settlers; the Bontebok (its curious and striking colouration constituting it a veritable mammalian magpie), only lingering under special protection near Cape Agulhas; the Blesbok, whose numbers to-day are but a shadow of its vast old-time legions; the White-tailed Gnu, strange apparent mixture of Buffalo and Pony, yet a true Antelope; the White Rhinoceros, huge yet harmless, a four-footed Dodo; the Mountain Zebra, whose decimated numbers seem to be likely to suffer still further reduction owing to its destruction of wire-fencing; the great Eland, once plentiful in Cape Colony itself, a lovable creature, with the meekness and even the superficial appearance of a Jersey Cow; and the South
